
Book tjsj_isis- 



BRIEF HISTORY OF THE 

LOUISIANA TERRITORY 



BY 

WALTER ROBINSON SMITH, Ph. M. 

Instructor in American History in Washington University 



St. Couis, ntissouri. 

THE ST. LOUIS NEWS COMPANY, 

Publisher's Agents 

1904. 



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s^*^ 



M ^ 1^ 

PREFACE. 

The extraordinary revival of interest in all sorts of infor- 
mation regarding the Louisiana Purchase calls for a historical 
manual, brief, accurate, and readable, which the extensive litera- 
ture of the Territory does not at present contain. This volume 
is an attempt to supply such a want. It consists of the revised 
copy of four lectures delivered before the Washington University 
Association on the Mary Hemenway Foundation. The author 
lays no claim to exhaustive use of original sources but has ex- 
amined the wide range of literature touching upon the history of 
the Purchase Territory and accepted well authenticated facts 
wherever found. Special acknowledgments of aid and kindness 
are due to Miss Louise Dalton in charge of the Missouri Histor- 
ical Society Library, I6OO Locust Street, and to Dean Marshall 
S. Snow and Chancellor Winfield S. Chaplin of Washington Uni- 
versity. 

St. Louis, April 25, 1904. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



I. LA SALLE AND NEW FRANCE. 

Discovery of the Mississippi, 3. Early French explorations, 4. 
Quebec founded by Champlain, 4. Difficulties of exploration, 5. Gov- 
ernment of New France, 6. Jean Nicollet, 6. Early life of La Salle, 7. 
Explorations on the Ohio and Illinois, 7. Joliet and Marquette, 9, 10. 
La Salle's plan, 11. Journey, 12. Reaches mouth of the Mississippi, 13. 
In Texas, 14. Death and character, 15. 

II. NEW ORLEANS AND FRENCH LOUISIANA. 

D'Iberville takes up work of La Salle, 16. Bienville and the En- 
glish, 17. Settlements at mouth of the Mississippi, 18. Population in 
1711, 18. Louisiana under a monopolist, i8. Failure of Crozat, 19. 
The Mississippi Company, 19, 20. Founding of New Orleans, 20. Ex- 
plorations, 21. Discovery of upper Rockies, 22. Cahokia and Kaskas- 
kia founded, 22. Development of Louisiana, 23. Government of Louis- 
iana, 25. French and Indian War, 28. Fall of New France, 29. 

III. ST. LOUIS AND SPANISH LOUISIANA. 

Effect of transfer on Louisiana, 30. Creole Revolution, 31. New 
Orleans occupied by Spanish, 33. Founding of St. Louis, 35. Develop- 
ment, 36. Life of early settlers, 37. Government, 38. The Spaniards 
in St. Louis, 39. Death of Laclede, 40. Indian attack upon St. Louis, 
40. Condition at time of the Purchase, 41. Religious quarrel at New 
Orleans, 42. Administration of Galvez, 43. Aid to Americans in Rev- 
olution, 44. Echoes of the French Revolution, 45. The right of de- 
posit and the treaty of Madrid, 46. 

IV. A DIPLOMATIC DRAMA: THE GREAT PURCHASE . 

Inauguration of Jefferson, character, 48. Godoy, 50. Talleyrand, 
50. Napoleon Bonaparte, 50. Efforts of France to regain Louisiana, 
50. X. Y. Z. affair, 51. Napoleon's plan, 51. Compensation to Spain, 
53. Treaty of San Ildefonso, 53. Spanish America, 54. Livingston 

Cm) 



IV Contents 

sent to France, 55. St. Domingo, 56. Toussaint L. Ouverture, 57. Re- 
bellion in Hayti, 57. The elements of the struggle, 58. Napoleon's St. 
Domingan policy, 59. Le Clerc in St. Domingo, 59. Failure, 60. Jef- 
ferson's diplomacy, 61. Party management, 62. Monroe sent to France, 
63. War excitement, 64. European war, 65. Napoleon decides to sur- 
render Louisiana, 66. Negotiations, 67. The Purchase, 68. 

V. LOUISIANA TERRITORY UNDER THE UNITED STATES. 

News of the purchase, 70. Jefferson's constitutional scruples, 70, 71. 
Provisions of the Treaty, 72. Party littleness, 72, 73. Government of 
the New Territory, 74. Boundaries, 75. Extent and ideas of the new 
territory, 75, 76. Transfer from Spain to France, 77. From France 
to the United States, 78. Division of Territory, 80. Loussat's letter, 
81. New Orleans at time of purchase, 82. Upper Louisiana, 84. Burr 
conspiracy, 85. Lewis and Clark expedition, 86. Pike's explorations, 

87. Louisiana admitted into the Union, 88. Speech of Josiah Quincy, 

88. Jackson at New Orleans, 89. States carved out of the Territory, 
90, 91. Riches of the Mississippi Valley, 91. 



BRIEF HISTORY OF THE 
LOUISIANA TERRITORY. 



CHAPTER I. 



LA SALLE AND NEW FRANCE. 



NATIONS no less than individuals possess a variety of 
characteristics which give them success along different 
lines of activity. This truth is strikingly illustrated 
in the early history of the New World. The Spanish 
and Portuguese did most of the work of discovery and explora- 
tion by sea; the French were the most noted explorers by land 
and the most brilliant administrators over a widely extended 
territory and a diversified native population; and, while the 
English did little of the work of discovery and exploration, they 
were the most successful colonizers. With regard to the 
Mississippi valley, it may be said that the Spanish discovered it, 
the French explored it and conceived the idea of constructing 
therein a great empire, and the Anglo-Saxon settled it and de- 
veloped resources and a population beyond anything of which 
the boldest French pioneer ever dreamed. 

The discovery of the Mississippi was the work of Hernando 
De Soto. He had been conspicuous in the ruthless conquest of 
Peru, and was later the Spanish Governor of Cuba. Landing 
on the coast of Florida with nearly six hundred well-equipped 
men he plunged boldly into the wilderness and after months 
of hardship and suffering, discovered the Mississippi river; but 
it was only to be buried beneath its turbid waters, while his 
followers fled down its friendly current, glad to escape from 
the Eldorado of their dreams which had proved rather to be a 
nightmare of misery and death. The discovery passed out of 
men's minds, and a century and a quarter later, when the French 
explorers floated down the same majestic stream, they were un- 
conscious that any European had ever before gazed upon its 
banks. 

(3) 



4 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

The attention of France was called to the New World dur- 
ing a war with Spain which was begun in 1521. The exchequer 
of Spain was being gorged with gold and silver from the mines 
of Mexico, and the ambitious Francis I. decided that he would 
like to have his treasury supplied in the same way. In 1524> 
Verrazano was sent out to explore the regions north of Mexico, 
in the hope of finding gold and a northwest passage to the Orient. 
He skirted the American coast from North Carolina to Maine, 
and returned with the best map of the coast made during the 
epoch. Ten years later Jacques Cartier landed further to the 
north, and finally sailed up the St. Lawrence river as far as 
Montreal. In 1540 Roberval attempted to plant a colony in 
Canada, but failed. In 1562-65 followed Coligny's noble but 
unfortunate attempt to make a settlement in Florida. It was 
wiped out in cold blood by the Spaniards, forming a tragedy 
which has been most graphically portrayed by Francis Parkman 
in his "Pioneers of France in the New World." 

It was not until the opening of the next century that France 
succeeded in planting a permanent colony in the New World. 
The chimera of mines bursting with wealth and streams whose 
beds were studded with pearls had vanished, and the prospect 
of fortunes to be made in the fur trade and the New Foundland 
fisheries now lured on the adventurers. In l603 the Sieur de 
Monts obtained a monopoly of the fur trade, with permission to 
plant colonies in a large tract of land extending from New York 
to Cape Breton, known as Acadia. Port Royal was settled the 
next year, and in 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec. 
Champlain was cheerful, brave, adventurous, high-minded, a 
man of culture, shrewd, and enterprising; a hero worthy of 
France and of his reputation as the founder of Canada. The 
early history of America furnishes no more gallant and attrac- 
tive character. He made the one mistake of alienating the 
Iroquois Confederacy, but that was probably necessary, or at 
least defensible. No magnificent cavalcade of adventurers, 
backed by the treasures of Mexico and Peru, were at his com- 



La Salle and New France. 5 

mand; he had to depend upon Indian allies^ and without the aid 
of the Algonquins, which meant the fatal enmity of the Five 
Tribes, he could not have explored the strategic regions about 
the lake which bears his name. He remained in New France, 
guiding her destinies with ability and discretion until his death 
in 1635. 

Before the death of Champlain trading-posts and missions 
had been planted along the banks of the St. Lawrence at 
Tadoussac, Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers, and the Jesuits 
had penetrated the western wilds and were baptising the naked 
savages on the coast of Lake Huron. But the growth of New 
France was slow. The interests of the adventurers who held a 
monopoly of the fur trade were opposed to the extension of set- 
tlements. A growth of population would divide their profits. 
Moreover, the class of pioneers was inferior. Few of them were 
animated by any high motives, while a vast majority were driven 
on solely by the free life of the wilderness, and the lust of 
trade. Montaigne's famous complaint that if you "Put three 
Frenchmen into the deserts of Lybia, they will not live a month 
together without fighting," is eminently justifiable. This spirit 
lost to France an empire in India, and in the early history of 
America, jealousies, bickerings, and petty squabbles over every 
conceivable situation were constant. The Franciscans opposed 
the Jesuits, and both opposed the Huguenots, who of all French- 
men were most capable of success in colonizing America. The 
traders were always ready to cut each other's throats, and were 
continually harassed by the " coureurs-de-hois ," a sort of French 
"poor white trash" who lived among the Indians, and carried on 
an independent traffic in spite of the fur trade monopoly. The 
support from France was vacillating and uncertain, yet the 
colonial authorities of the mother country were ever ready to in- 
terfere, and their meddlesome changes of policy added not a 
little to the turbulence of the colony. Nor was the friendship 
of the Indians, which the Frenchman, with his facile and adapt- 
able nature, was able to obtain much more easily than the exclu- 



Q Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

sive Englishman, wholly to be relied upon; for as soon as they 
found the French trader unable to defend himself, they were 
no less ready to take his scalp than his hatchets in return for 
furs. Only the devotion of the missionaries with the skill of a 
few of the leaders was able to save the colony from destruction. 

Under such conditions the colony drifted until, in I66I, the 
young Louis XIV. assumed personal control of the government 
of France. He took great interest in New France, adopted it 
as a foster child, and injured it by excessive paternal care, rather 
than by neglect. Richelieu had established autocratic govern- 
ment in Canada in the early part of the century, and Louis XIV. 
now strengthened it by sending out three able men to take charge 
of affairs and inaugurate a new era. They were Marquis de 
Tracy, military commandant, in charge of all military affairs; 
Sieur de Courcelle, governor, who was to have charge of the gen- 
eral enterprises of the colony; and Jean Baptiste Talon, intend- 
ant, whose duties were to regulate the minor affairs of the colony 
and guard the actions of the other two. Large reinforcements 
came over, bringing the best army America had yet seen. 

Canada immediately took on new life. An expedition of 
six hundred French regulars marched into the heart of the Iro- 
quois country and terrified the Long House into peace for twenty 
years. They were then ready for Western exploration. About 
1640 a settlement had been made as far west as the Sault St. 
Marie and a missionary post established among the Indians on 
the borders of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Just before the death 
of Champlain, he had sent out Jean Nicollet to explore this 
region. Nicollet had been given by Champlain as a hostage to 
the Indians to bind a treaty of peace and to be trained as an 
interpreter for future dealings. He had been adopted and lived 
among the Ottawas and Nipissungs for sixteen years, and had 
just returned to the settlements. Champlain had heard of a 
race of beardless men beyond the great lakes and a "great water" 
still beyond. Who could doubt that these were Orientals and 
the great water beyond the Indian Ocean? Nicollet set out in 



La Salle and New France. 7 

1635 with a small party, taking along a Chinese robe of bril- 
liantly flowered damask, in which to greet the Mongolians be- 
yond Lake Michigan. He reached the vicinity and sent some 
of his Indian attendants to announce his coming. Then, array- 
ing himself in his Chinese robe, and waiving a pistol in each hand, 
he advanced to meet the expectant savages, for they were none 
other than the tribe of Winnebago Indians. The women and 
children fled screaming with terror, but the warriors looked on 
in admiration and envy. A great feast was prepared, in which 
a hundred and twenty beavers were devoured, and Nicollet passed 
on. He crossed over to the Wisconsin river, and descended so 
far that he could report on his return that in three days more 
he would have reached the sea. The water which he called the 
sea was what the Indians called the "Messipi;" none other than 
the great river which nearly a hundred years before had kept 
from savage desecration the body of De Soto. 

The report of this journey aroused in the Jesuits and others 
a great desire to solve the mystery of the forests and learn 
what became of the great water which was soon reported to be 
a river. This desire first took tangible form in the heart of a 
heroic young Frenchman who had recently come over to Canada 
from Rouen, Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle. He was the 
son of a wealthy merchant and had received a good education. 
Early in life he seems to have been fascinated by the mighty re- 
ligious organization which was then making its force felt through- 
out the world and allied himself with the Jesuits. But his tower- 
ing ambition and consciousness of ability chafed under its ma- 
chine-like routine, and he withdrew from the order with a reputa- 
tion for scholarship, unimpeachable integrity, and a determination 
which nothing could shake. His connection with the Jesuits had 
cut ofi" his inheritance and with very limited resources he started 
for Canada where his brother was a priest of St. Sulpice. It is 
probable that before leaving France he had formed a stern re- 
solve to carve out of the Western wilderness a name for himself 
and an empire for France. At any rate, as soon as he arrived 



8 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

at Montreal in 1 666, he was offered some land above the La Chine 
rapids on the extreme frontier in a very dangerous position, and 
Immediately settled upon it. The grant had been made because 
such an estate would be in the line of attack from the Indians, 
and serve as a warning to the priests of the Seminary; it was 
accepted because it was a post of advantage in carrying on the 
fur trade, and gave La Salle a good chance to study the Indian 
languages and customs. This opportunity was assiduously used, 
and he was soon master of a number of Indian dialects. From 
a party of Senecas he heard much of a river called the Ohio, or 
Beautiful River, which was so long that it took many months to 
traverse it. Common report apprised him of the geography be- 
yond the great lakes. Like nearly all of the early explorers his 
imagination flew across the wild and lonely regions that stretched 
away toward the sunset and he dreamed of new avenues of com- 
merce and riches in traffic with China and Japan. The long 
river mentioned by the Senecas was doubtless the Ohio and Mis- 
sissippi merged into one, and La Salle thought it must flow into 
the "Vermilion Sea." This sea was the Gulf of California, and 
La Salle thought it would open up a western passage to China. 

La Salle was a man of action, and his resolution was soon 
formed. He hastened to Quebec to obtain the permission of the 
government to make his intended exploration. The cost was to 
be borne by himself, and since he had no money, it took nearly 
all of his estate to purchase four canoes with supplies and hire 
fourteen men for the expedition. It was midsummer, 1669, 
when the party set out. Soon the Indians became hostile, a large 
part of the men forsook him, but nothing daunted the resolution 
of La Salle. He pushed on to the Ohio, and floated down to the 
rapids near Louisville. During the next year he went north- 
ward, crossed Lake Erie, ascended the Detroit river, passed 
through Lake Huron, thence to Lake Michigan. From Lake 
Michigan he ascended the Chicago river, crossed the portage to 
the Illinois, and descended it far towards the Mississippi. Tra- 
dition says that La Salle reached the Mississippi by both the 



La Salle and New France. 9 

Ohio and the Illlinois, but this is not probable. He had dis- 
covered these two rivers, however, gained confidence, broadened 
his ideas, and returned ready to promulgate his larger plan. 

Meanwhile, it is necessary to leave La Salle, and trace an- 
other expedition of importance. The governor and intendent of 
France had become interested in the discovery of the Missis- 
sippi, For this purpose an expedition was planned and put in 
charge of Louis Joliet. Joliet was a native of Canada, having 
been born in Quebec in 1645. He was educated by the Jesuits, 
but, like La Salle, had renounced the priesthood to become a 
merchant. There was no spark of genius in his make-up. He 
was simply an intelligent, courageous, prudent leader; possessed 
of abundant enterprise and sound judgment. A Jesuit priest, 
Jacques Marquette, was sent along as secretary of the expedition. 
Marquette was an excellent linguist, possessed of a gentle and 
poetic nature, a rare spiritual insight and elevation of character, 
coupled with the courage of a knight and the endurance of an 
Indian. 

On a May day of 1673 these two men with five companions 
and two birch canoes, supplied with an abundance of smoked 
meat and Indian corn, turned their faces toward the unknown 
West, They plied their paddles by day and drew up their 
canoes into the edge of the forest where they encamped by night. 
Passing along the northern shores of Lake Michigan, they glided 
into Green Bay, thence up the Fox river past Lake Winnebago, 
and carrying their canoes across the narrow portage, they em- 
barked on the placid waters of the Wisconsin. They were 
warned by the Indians not to venture further, because the tribes 
beyond were ferocious, and the forests and rivers were inhab- 
ited by demons. But on they floated, down the current which 
led they knew not where — perhaps to the Vermilion Sea, pos- 
sibly to the Gulf of Mexico, or perchance to the South Sea. 
One month after starting, to their inexpressible joy, they glided 
out upon the blue waters of the Mississippi, and turned their 
prows to the Southward. For days the solitudes along the 



10 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

stream were unrelieved by the faintest trace of man, but after 
a fortnight they reached the Indian village of Peoria, where they 
were feasted and again advised to retrace their journey. Un- 
heeding, they re-embarked, floated past the mouth of the Illinois, 
and soon their canoes were tossing about in the surging vortex 
formed by the mighty Missouri, whose angry current rushed in 
with a momentum that could only have been acquired by coursing 
through unknown vasts of barbarism to the West. 

Recovering from their fright, they continued on their way 
down the swollen current, past St. Louis, beyond the mouth of the 
Beautiful River; on and on, until they reached the lands of the 
Arkansas. Here they landed and after a narrow escape, suc- 
ceeded in making friends with the Indians. The increasing 
danger of the situation now led to a serious council regarding a 
change of policy. They had gone far enough to prove that the 
Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, and not into the 
South Sea or the Gulf of California, and would it not be better 
to return and report progress preparatory to a more extended 
enterprise.^ They thought so, and beneath the sultry rays of a 
July sun, they set out to toil against the gloomy current and to 
drive their canoes up the river and thence to the Canadian set- 
tlements on the St. Lawrence. Marquette sickened, but his in- 
domitable spirit encouraged the others. Reaching the mouth of 
the Illinois, they ascended it and slowly made their way to the 
mission settlement on Green Bay, where Marquette was left to a 
lingering death, while Joliet passed on to Montreal to report the 
result of the expedition. 

While Joliet and Marquette were gliding down the bosom of 
the Mississippi, La Salle was making a friend of the new gov- 
ernor, Frontenac, and recovering from the bankruptcy into which 
his last explorations had plunged him. Even before their re- 
turn, he surmised that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of 
Mexico, and when this notion was confirmed, his dreams began 
to materialize into plans. He had been opposed in all of his 
work by the Jesuits; he had been ridiculed and persecuted by 



La Salle and New France. 11 

the Canadian traders; why not leave to them the icy regions of 
the St. Lawrence, and found a new empire in the mild and fertile 
valley of the Mississippi ? The bold genius of a natural soldier 
and frontiersman was his, and he readily blocked out the ele- 
ments of his plan. If he could erect a fortified post at the 
mouth of the Mississippi, it would serve as a defense against 
both England and Spain. Then a regular line of forts and 
trading posts could be established from Ontario to the Gulf, and 
the whole trade of the Mississippi valley could be converged 
into the fort at its mouth, and thence to Europe by sea. Ac- 
cording to the French theory of international law, the discovery 
of a river gave a tentative title to all of the lands drained by 
that river and its tributaries; how much more secure would be 
this title if that of occupation were added to that of discovery, 
and if a line of forts bearing aloft the fleurs-de-lis and bristling 
with French cannon warned the world that this territory from the 
AUeghanies to Mexico belonged to the King of France! 

The scheme was brilliant and far-reaching, and success 
would require genius, daring, suffering; but La Salle was not 
daunted. With him, to form a plan meant an immediate and 
persevering effort to realize it. He appealed to Governor Front- 
enac, to whose imagination and ambition the idea appealed no 
less than to that of its originator. But the governor could lend 
no financial aid. The only resource was an appeal to le Grand 
Monarque of France. Consequently the autumn of 1677 finds 
him at the court of France, where he obtained permission to 
make the projected explorations, build forts, find a route to 
Mexico, and as a financial aid, he was given a monopoly of the 
trade in buflFalo hides. He returned in 1678, and replaced with 
stone the wooden Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, which was 
the first in his chain of forts to be extended to the Gulf. He 
engaged forty men for the expedition down the Mississippi. 

Two of these deserve special mention. Henri de Tonty 
was a Neapolitan officer, who had had a hand blown off in the 
Sicilian wars. He had the hand replaced by one of iron, over 



1 2 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

which he wore a glove. From Italy he went to France, thence 
to Canada. He was sensible and brave, always loyal to La 
Salle, and his character was not badly typified by the Indian 
sobriquet of Iron Hand. The other was Louis Hennepin, a 
Franciscan friar, whose love of adventure had brought him to 
New France. He went along as reporter for the expedition, 
and was not without usefulness. His ability was undoubted, and 
he deserves credit for the exploration of the upper Mississippi; 
but his claim that he first descended the Mississippi to its mouth, 
put forth after the death of La Salle, was so preposterous that 
he has gained as great a reputation for mendacity as George 
Washington for truthfulness. 

La Salle first set about constructing the Griffin, the largest 
vessel yet built for the navigation of the Lakes. A party under 
Tonty was sent in advance to build Fort Niagara, the second 
link in the chain of forts. Late in 1678 La Salle set forth in 
the Griffin, and after a mutiny and various buffetings on the 
stormy lake, reached the southern end of Lake Michigan. Here 
he built the third in the line of forts at the mouth of the St. 
Joseph river in Michigan. Meanwhile, the Griffin had been 
sent back to the St. Lawrence with a cargo of furs to appease 
the greedy and frightened creditors, who had loaned La Salle 
money at forty per cent, interest, and had later threatened to 
prevent his departure, for fear that he would never return. 

Early in 1679 La Salle and the remainder of his company 
pushed on through the wilderness and erected on the banks of 
the Illinois the fourth fort. It was appropriately named Fort 
Creve-coeur, or Heartbreak. The Griffin had long since been 
due with much needed supplies. It had either foundered on 
the lakes or been scuttled by a mutinous crew, and the little 
party on the Illinois were threatened by both famine and In- 
dian massacre. It was under these circumstances that the he- 
roic soul of La Salle formed a resolution that for courage and 
determination has never been surpassed. Before the ice of win- 
ter had left the streams, he set out with five companions to walk 



La Salle and New France. 13 

through a dense wilderness, part of it infested with hostile In- 
dians, over a thousand miles to Montreal; there to obtain sup- 
plies, return to Creve-coeur, which he left in the hands of his 
faithful lieutenant, Tonty, and then continue his work. 

By the time La Salle and his companions had reached Lake 
Erie, the hardships had so exhausted them that La Salle alone 
had to ferry five sick men across to the fort on the Canadian 
shore. Taking three fresh men, he proceeded to Montreal, only 
to learn that the ship which was to come from France with sup- 
plies had been wrecked and everything lost. Moreover, as he 
was gathering supplies, a message arrived from Fort Heart- 
break that the garrison had mutinied, driven out Tonty, pulled 
the block-house to pieces, and that they were now waiting on 
Lake Ontario to murder him on his return. With iron resolu- 
tion he set out, captured the whole party, and sent them to the 
governor in chains; then proceeded on his way to the rescue of 
Tonty. This was done in the summer of 1680, and the autumn 
of 1681 saw him again on the road to the Mississippi. He had 
proved himself superior to his enemies, to the elements, and to 
a series of calamities that would have appalled any ordinary 
heart. But fortune now seemed to take up his cause. He set 
out by way of Ontario, Lake Michigan, the Chicago river, crossed 
the portage to the Illinois, descended it to the Mississippi, and 
floated on, week after week, until at last on April Q, 1682, the 
fleurs-de-lis were planted at its mouth and the great basin from 
the Alleghanies to the Rockies was declared to be the possession 
of the King of France, under the name of Louisiana. The 
period of discovery was complete; all that remained was to cinch 
the title by settlement. And this is where the vastness of La 
Salle's plan had to wait on time and circumstances, and led to 
his own sad fate. 

He returned up the Mississippi, and fortified a new post 
at Starved Rock on the Illinois, which he named St. Louis. 
Leaving Tonty in command, he hastened to France, where he 
was honored by an audience with the haughty Louis XIV. He 



14 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

was thoroughly successful, and a magnificent expedition was 
fitted out to go by sea to the mouth of the Mississippi, and there 
establish the long desired fortress. But the fates again began 
spinning their fatal web in which La Salle was soon enmeshed. 
Beaugeu was selected as the naval commander, and a period of 
bickering and strife followed. La Salle rightly felt that his 
will should be obeyed, and he showed little address in dealing 
with another who was likewise used to command. The disagree- 
ment of the commanders was less fatal, however, than the mis- 
takes of the pilots who missed the mouth of the Mississippi, and 
passed along the coast of Texas, probably to the Matagorda bay. 
Here, after the loss of some of the vessels. La Salle and a party 
landed and built Fort St. Louis of Texas, in 1685, while the 
fleet searched for the mouth of the river, and finally sailed home 
to France. 

The expedition had left France in 1684 with about four 
hundred people on board, including several families and a num- 
ber of girls who were to help found homes in the new land. By 
the end of 1686 the situation was desperate, and a trip to France 
was found necessary. La Salle determined to return by way 
of Quebec, passing up the Mississippi, and getting supplies from 
Tonty at St. Louis of the Illinois. Early in 1687 he set out with 
sixteen whites and two Indians, leaving twenty people, includ- 
ing seven girls, behind. They must find the Mississippi, but 
knew not where, and started out through the wilderness to the 
east. Their hunger was soon desperate, and by the time they 
reached the Trinity river, a mutinous spirit arose in the com- 
pany. Three of La Salle's faithful friends were murdered by 
the mutineers. La Salle had a presentiment that they were 
planning to take his life, but the vigilance thus aroused was un- 
availing. Two mutinous wretches skulked in ambush, while a 
third decoyed La Salle into a fatal spot where he was shot dead. 

Thus ended the career of the boldest genius France lent to 
the New World. After great suflPering, six of the remaining 
party reached Canada, while those left behind at St. Louis of 



La Salle and New France. 15 

Texas were attacked by Indians and nearly all killed. Of the 
whole of La Salle's party only fourteen ever reached a French 
settlement. 

At his death La Salle was only forty-four years of age. 
He had been in Canada but twenty-one years; yet his person- 
ality had been stamped more indelibly upon the fabric of New 
France than any other character in her history. Reared in a 
home of refinement and luxury, educated in the best schools of 
Rouen, he became in America a frontiersman whose lofty pur- 
pose gave him an endurance surpassing the native coureurs-de- 
bois and even his Indian guides. He was unselfish and far- 
seeing, but too autocratic and self-contained to inspire loyalty 
in mediocre minds. His life seemed inextricably interwoven with 
fate. Pursued by the ridicule and slander of enemies, harassed 
by creditors, deserted and betrayed by subordinates, twice poi- 
soned and more than once marked for destruction by mutineers, 
he pursued his ends with a singleness of purpose, and a depth 
of determination never surpassed. He endured his misfortunes 
in silence, and pinned his faith to his OAvn indomitable will. His 
plans failed during his lifetime, because it was cut short by the 
hand of the assassin, and because of their very vastness; but 
New France continued to develop along the lines marked out 
by his genius, and the French empire in America which crumbled 
in the middle of the next century before the onslaught of the 
United Colonies, backed by the English lion and the cross of 
St. George, was simply the fruition of his ideal. 



CHAPTER II. 

NEW ORLEANS AND FRENCH LOUISIANA. 

THE work of La Salle was not destined to perish but to 
bear fruit in the new century about to begin. He had 
sown the seed with infinite toil and his very life's blood; 
but while his bones lay bleaching on the plains of 
Texas, one of his most persistent enemies was to reap where he 
had sown. The faithful Tonty, who had been left at St. Louis 
of the Illinois, applied in 1694 for a commission to fulfill the 
task left incomplete by the death of his chief, but the commis- 
sion was refused. In 1698, Le Moyne d'Iberville was more 
successful, and obtained permission to plant a colony in the gate- 
way to Louisiana. Iberville was a native Canadian, who had 
joined the French navy, and by sheer ability forced his way to 
the rank of post-captain. He had learned on the frontier the 
value of well-directed guns, and carrying this idea into the navy, 
he preceded the "stars and stripes" in showing how large a part 
markmanship could play in deciding naval battles. Against 
great odds, he drove an English fleet out of Hudson Bay and 
established a control in that region that lasted for years. With 
a splendid reputation for valor he now took up the mantle of 
La Salle and wore it with honor. In breadth and brilliancy of 
conception he was La Salle's inferior; but not in energy, fire, 
and resourcefulness. 

Iberville sailed from Brest with two warships and a num- 
ber of transports in October, 1698. His destination was the 
mouth of the Mississippi, which he entered in March, 1699- He 
arrived not any too soon; for England and Spain had both de- 
cided to occupy the mouth of the river. While coasting along 
from Florida to the Mississippi, he had come upon two Spanish 
ships in the harbor of Pensacola, who were bent upon securing 

(16) 



New Orleans and French Louisiana. 17 

the whole region for the King of Spain. Likewise, before the 
close of the year, Bienville, a younger brother of Iberville, while 
on an exploring expedition up the Mississippi, met an English 
ship under command of Captain Louis Bank, who had been sent 
out to found a settlement on the Mississippi. They were not 
quite sure that this was the Mississippi, however, and Bienville 
readily convinced the too credulous Englishmen that it was an- 
other stream on which Louis XIV. had several flourishing settle- 
ments. The ship departed, but not before the French engineer 
under Captain Bank had given Bienville a petition to be carried 
to King Louis, signed by four hundred Carolina Huguenots, ask- 
ing that they be allowed to settle as Frenchmen in Louisiana 
with liberty of conscience. This petition was spurned and thus 
was saved to the Carolinas some of their best immigrants and lost 
to France through bigotry the services of her noblest sons in 
America. 

Iberville built a fort at Biloxi, on the coast of Mississippi, 
where he left Sieur de Sauville and Bienville in command and 
returned to France. Through fear of English interference, he 
was almost immediately sent back with reinforcements. His 
instructions were to establish pearl-fisheries, bison farms, and to 
look for mines, which was "la grande affaire." Bienville had 
been exploring the region round about, and on one excursion 
had discovered an Indian chief wearing a blue-hooded cloak. He 
likewise had a letter which had been written on a piece of bark 
by Tonty thirteen years before, when he had descended the Mis- 
sissippi from Fort St. Louis to meet La Salle. Wliile the latter 
was famishing in the barren wilds of Texas, his lieutenant with 
supplies was wearily waiting for him on the banks of the Mis- 
sissippi. 

When Iberville returned to Louisiana, he went up stream 
as far as Natchez, but later descended, and in January, 1700, 
built a wooden redoubt on one of the mouths of the Mississippi. 
He called it Fort La Boulaye, and its purpose was to serve as a 

2 



18 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

barricade against the English. This fear of the English was 
well founded. A quarter of a century before Joliet had found 
English goods on the banks of the Mississippi^ and it was known 
that they were now in constant commiuiication with the Chicka- 
saws. Iberville next ordered the feeble establishment at Biloxi 
to be removed (1701) to Mobile Bay. This drew a protest from 
the Spanish, which availed nothing, and a third settlement was 
soon made at Dauphin Island. The strategic point at the mouth 
of the Mississippi was neglected in order to erect a barrier on 
the Spanish frontier; but its importance was not forgotten. 

Louisiana thus established, drifted on in turbulence and 
peril. Recruits were occasionally sent out by the French gov- 
ernment. These recruits consisted of marriageable girls, ques- 
tionable in quality, religious overseers, male and female, soldiers, 
workmen, and vagabond adventiiVers. They were, as a whole, 
rather a worthless lot, who had not the initiative to hunt for 
mines, nor the stability to settle down as planters, nor even the 
ability to govern themselves and live in peace and harmony. 
They depended on the paternalism of the French government 
for everything. Idleness and vice were common, and quarrels 
perpetual. Animals sent out for propagation were slaughtered 
and eaten by the improvident colonists, while famine and pesti- 
lence made annual visitations. By 1711, the population had 
reached the grand total of 380 souls, 170 of whom were in the 
King's pay, living in the four settlements of Mobile, Biloxi, 
Dauphin Island, and Ship Island. 

Moreover Louis had tired of a dependency which had been 
a constant drain upon his resources for thirteen years, without 
yielding any revenue in return and decided to try the disastrous 
expedient of turning it over to a merchant adventurer. A 
wealthy business man, named Anthony Crozat, offered to send out 
two ship-loads of colonists a year, and continue the settlement 
in return for a monopoly of trade for fifteen years in the whole 
region drained by the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Ohio, and 
their tributaries, as far north as the Illinois. The officers were 



New Orleans and French Louisiana. 19 

still to be selected and paid by the King, and a garrison of sol- 
diers was to be maintained for nine years. La Mothe-Cadillac, 
the turbulent governor of Detroit, was transferred to Louisiana 
to take the place of the capable Bienville, and things steadily 
drifted from bad to worse. By 1717 Crozat had sickened of his 
bargain and gladly surrendered his contract to the King. 

While the grinding monopoly of Crozat was in general harm- 
ful, it was not without some good results. The population had 
grown more discontented because they were forbidden to leave 
Louisiana — thus adding prison bars to misery — and to carry on 
individual trade; "freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, of 
trade, and of action, were alike denied" says Parkman; but their 
numbers had increased, and some explorations had been made. 
In 1714, Juchereau de Saint-Denis had been sent out to explore 
western Louisiana. He had ascended far up the Red river, es- 
tablished a post at Natchitoches, and crossed to the Spanish set- 
tlements in Mexico. An effort was made to open trade with 
the Spaniards, but it was unsuccessful. Trading stations had 
been established on the present sites of Natchez and Nashville. 
Coureurs-de-hois had been sent out to search for mines, but their 
failure and faithlessness doubtless inspired Governor Cadillac to 
send to France the despairing note that "this colony is a monster 
without head or tail, and its government is a shapeless absurdity." 

The failure of Crozat was not enough for the French gov- 
ernment, and the whole region was next turned over to that notor- 
ious financial charlatan, John Law. He organized the Missis- 
sippi Company, the shareholders in which were to fatten on the 
gold mines of Louisiana. Huge ingots of gold from this distant 
Eldorado were displayed in shop windows by the side of diamonds 
which were crystallized in a single night by the magic of the 
Louisiana atmosphere, from the liquid in the petals of certain 
flowers. Speculation became hysterical and men fought for 
places in the line to the bank where shares were sold. The com- 
pany's ships were flooded with volunteers to emigrate. 

But disillusion was speedily to follow. The emigrants 



20 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

learned the miserable truth, and in their fury sent exaggerated re- 
ports of hardships and suffering back to France. The dazzling 
bubble soon burst, scattering ruin in its wake, while John Law 
was forced by the infuriated bankrupts to flee for his life. 

The rule of the Mississippi Company in Louisiana was short 
but energetic. Bienville was again made governor and allowed 
to carry out a scheme long contemplated. The redoubt at the 
mouth of the Mississippi had been abandoned, and a port was 
desired higher up the stream. Bienville consequently searched 
out the best location and in February, 1718, laid the foundation 
of New Orleans, ever to remain the idolized Mecca of the Creoles. 
It soon became the center of the Louisiana settlement, and 
formed a basis for the exploration and trade of the West. 

New France now had two capitals: the one on the banks of 
the St. Lawrence controlling the frigid regions to the north; the 
other commanding the lazy bayous at the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi. From Canada and Louisiana proceeded simultaneously 
the enterprises that were to explore in detail and settle the basin 
of the Mississippi. From Canada went out Le Sueur who vis- 
ited the Sioux about the headwaters of the INIississippi as early 
as 1683. Ten years later he built a fort on the banks of Lake 
Pepin, after which he went to France and secured a monopoly of 
the fur trade for ten years. An expedition was fitted out in 
France, but La Sueur was captured by the English on the way 
to Canada. He next decided to make Louisiana his base of 
operations, and in April, 1700, started up the Mississippi with 
twenty-five men for the Sioux region in ]Minnesota. In the 
autumn they ascended Blue Earth river and built a strong fort 
which they named Fort I'Huillier. Here they spent the winter, 
and in the spring descended the Mississippi and sailed to France 
with a cargo of beaver skins and four thousand pounds of worth- 
less blue earth, which they imagined would prove a valuable com- 
modity. The indefatigable La Sueur afterwards fitted out an- 
other expedition, but died on the road to America. 

In 1719 Benard de la Harpe set out from Louisiana, as- 



New Orleans and French Louisiana. 21 

cended the Red river, left a few men at Natchitoches, passed 
along the northern border of Texas, thence overland north and 
west to the Arkansas, and finally rested among the Nassonite 
Indians. They told him that by ascending their river he could 
reach the Spanish settlements, which indicates that he was in the 
neighborhood of a tributary of the Rio Grande. Two years 
after his return he started out to explore the Arkansas, but soon 
gave up the attempt. 

While La Harpe was ascending the Red river in 1719, Du 
Tisne went up the Missouri river beyond the center of the present 
State of Missouri. Later he started overland from the Missis- 
sippi near the southern boundary of the state and penetrated the 
forest beyond the Osage towards the western border of the State. 

In 1722 Bourgmont went up the Missouri and built Fort 
Orleans near the mouth of the Grand. He then proceeded west- 
ward, ijassed along the Kansas river, thence west and south to 
the Arkansas, where he managed to assemble the chiefs of all 
the Indian tribes of the region, and exact a treaty of peace 
whereby the French were to be allowed a free passage through 
the country to trade with the Spaniards in Mexico. Some fifteein 
years later, the Mallet brothers explored the Platte river, went up 
its south fork, thence across the plains of Colorado and south 
to Santa Fe, where they arrived in 1739. 

Meanwhile, the Canadians were plunging into the wilder- 
ness far to the northwest. Pierre la Verendrye, with Montreal 
as headquarters, between 1731 and 1740, erected a chain of forts 
from Lake Superior to the Dakotas — Fort Pierre, on Rainy Lake ; 
Fort St. Charles, on the Lake of the Woods; Fort Maurepas, at 
the mouth of the Winnipeg river; Fort Bourbon, on Lake Win- 
nipeg; Fort La Reine, on the Assiniboin; and Fort Dauphin, on 
Lake Manitoba. La Verendrye had two sons, Pierre and Chev- 
alier de la Verendrye, no less daring than himself. Using Fort 
La Reine as headquarters, they set out in 1742 in search of the 
Pacific ocean. Thej^ struck out boldly to the west, crossed the 
Missouri into Dakota, passed just north of the Black Hills, 



22 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

crossed the "Bad Lands/' threaded the defiles of the Powder 
River mountains, and at last descried in the distance the rugged, 
snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. This Parkman pronounces 
the discovery of the Rocky mountains proper, although their 
southern extension had long been known to the Spaniards. This 
gigantic wilderness trip had been made with only two followers, 
without any government aid, and antedated by sixty-two years 
the expedition of Lewis and Clark. 

Practically the whole of Louisiana had now been traversed 
by the hardy and intrepid French explorers. In the meanwhile 
New Orleans had passed through numerous vicissitudes. The Mis- 
sissippi Company had sent out various ship-loads of reinforce- 
ments. One was a cargo of twenty marriageable girls who were 
all happily mated within thirty days. In June, 1719 a company 
of 800 arrived at New Orleans. In October, 200 Germans, 
valuable as colonists because they were willing to work, settled 
what was later known as the German coast on the banks of the 
river twenty miles above New Orleans. Before the close of the 
year, 500 negro slaves were brought out to swell the force of 
laborers. New Orleans was drained and palisaded; a levee con- 
fined the Mississippi to its banks ; warehouses were built. A 
Jesuit station was founded which experimented with various 
fruits and farm products. A company of Ursuline nuns founded 
a school for girls, 1727, and established a hospital for the care 
of the sick. 

Other enterprises were begun and new settlements planned. 
The monopoly of Crozat had left the Illinois region where La 
Salle had planted Fort St. Louis, in the possession of Canada; 
but that of the Mississippi Company had been made to include 
the whole Mississippi basin to the Lakes. Jesuit missionaries 
had never ceased to labor among the Indians on the Illinois, and 
in 1700, Father Marest led some of the Kaskaskias to the Mis- 
sissippi at the mouth of the Kaskaskia river, and there founded a 
settlement. Within a few weeks of the same date. Father Pirret 
founded Cahokia, across the river opposite the present site of 



New Orleans and French Louisiana. 23 

St. Louis. Kaskaskia and Cahokia were the oldest permanent 
settlements in Illinois, Cahokia probably being the senior by a 
few weeks. Here came roving Canadians, coureurs-de-bois, and 
occasional stragglers from the Gulf. The earliest settlers mar- 
ried Indian squaws and built rude little huts of logs or bark to 
house their numerous progeny. Later, white women from Can- 
ada or Louisiana reached these settlements and gradually French 
began to replace the Indian homes. 

In 1720 Pierre Boisbriant was sent up from New Orleans 
with 100 men and founded Ft. Charters, sixteen miles above 
Kaskaskia. It was built of wood, but afterwards replaced by 
stone and made the capital of upper Louisiana. Here resided 
the commandant and the three coimcillors who ruled the settle- 
ment and maintained the military connexion between Canada 
and Louisiana. 

A Jesuit monastery was established at Kaskaskia in 1721. 
During the same year Philip Renault brought 200 miners and 
500 slaves and opened lead mines at Galena, Illinois. Prospect- 
ing parties were sent across into Missouri, where the Mine La- 
motte and the Potosi mines were opened up. Fur traders pen- 
etrated the forests and prairies far and near, and hunters found 
a paradise of delight in the deer, wild turkeys, bear and other 
game in abundance. Nor was the more stable occupation of 
agriculture wanting; for, in 1745, Upper Louisiana sent to New 
Orleans 400,000 pounds of grain. About 1735 a settlement was 
made on the Missouri side of the river at St. Genevieve which 
formed the oldest permanent settlement in the present State of 
Missouri. The population of the whole region by 1745 had 
reached nine hundred. But after all is said, the growth of 
upper Louisiana was slow. The population was worthless and 
dissolute, and when the Treaty of Paris turned it over to the 
Spanish it showed little prospect of future greatness. 

The new era of enterprise begun with the advent of John 
Law's Mississippi Company, continued under its guidance until 
November, 1731, when Louisiana again reverted to the King. 



24 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

New Orleans was progressing slowly, and gradually drawing to 
itself the radiating lines of industry throughout the whole prov- 
ince. Indigo, rice, tobacco, and lumber were exported in small 
quantities. By 1745, the population of the whole territory had 
grown to 4,000 French and 2,000 negroes. But nothing could 
preserve from dire threats of starvation a population composed 
of vagabonds kidnapped in the streets of Paris, convicts swept 
from the j ails of France, profligate adventurers, male and female, 
a heterogeneous polyglot of confirmed idlers, tale-bearers and gen- 
eral delinquents, preserved from utter inaninity by an occasional 
officer of real merit or an unfortunate of noble spirit — all cast 
together by force of circumstances into the midst of a wilderness 
demanding toil and fortitude and reeking with hardship and 
peril. In 1730 the whole New Orleans settlement had to live on 
the seeds of wild grass and reeds for three months. Food from 
the Illinois region or from the home government stood, more 
than once, between the garrison and famine. Moreover, pesti- 
lence crept into the filthy huts while fevers hovered about the 
dank atmosphere, and hastened the peopling of the new-born 
cemeteries. 

But amidst the general gloom and perpetually impending 
disasters, there were compensating features. The vision of em- 
pire that fired the heart of La Salle still warmed the pride of 
the Frenchmen. Great schemes to cut olF the Englishmen, who 
were slipping through the gaps of the Appalachian mountains 
and reaching out with grasping fingers to seize the latent wealth 
of the west, were being matured. The French leaders were dot- 
ting the extremities of the Ohio and St. Lawrence regions with 
forts and garrisons. Parties were sent out to the English bor- 
ders to plant the fleurs-de-lis and to sink leaden tablets bearing 
the arms of France as a warning to all intruders. At the junc- 
tion where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers unite to form 
the Ohio, one of these parties came upon a sober and dignified 
youth, bearing an important commission from Governor Dinwid- 
die, of Virginia. Business of great moment was transacted. A 



New Orleans and French Louisiana. 25 

yeai' later, that same youth led a military force to the same 
neighborhood and fired the first shot in a war that was to deter- 
mine the nationalitj^ of the whole valley of the Mississippi and 
her tributaries. Yet two times more that young man returned, 
and not a Frenchman was left to rule the disputed territory. A 
quarter of a century later this self-same leader was to be the 
hero of a second war and drive the last red coat from the soil 
of the United States. 

But before taking up the results of the momentous struggle 
that was to decide the fate of Louisiana, it may be well to consider 
further the government of the territory under French rule. In 
general features, the control of Louisiana was like that of Can- 
ada. New France was simply a reproduction of Old France. 
Louis XIV. was its benevolent despot, the paternal source of 
every species of activity. From his palace in Versailles the 
Grand Monarch issued edicts to control the minutest affairs of 
life. Parkman declares that "the new settler was found by the 
King, sent over by the King, and supplied by the King with a 
wife, a farm, and sometimes with a house." Even when Louis- 
iana had grown burdensome and was shifted to the shoulders of 
the monopolist Crozat, and later tossed into the lap of the Mis- 
sissippi Company, the paternalism of Versailles continued. The 
people of Louisiana were naturally indolent and shiftless, and 
this excessive coddling tended to reduce them to helpless auto- 
matons. What an instructive contrast the race of people this 
system developed presents to that produced by the lassez faire 
policy of the English government. The sturdy Puritan from 
the southeast of England, the covenanting Scotchman from the 
north of Ireland, the Huguenot refugee from the fetters of the 
supreme bigot of France, the sober Dutchman from freedom- 
loving Holland, left to shift for themselves in a wilderness in- 
hospitable and full of danger, were molded into sympathy in 
the crucible of distress and developed a self-sufficiency and an 
independent spirit which, when aroused, were irresistible. Self- 
government became second nature, and before their steady ad- 



26 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

vance, the wilderness faded away. The hunting grounds of the 
savage gave place to civilized homes, and when at last they were 
brought face to face with the French, the inexorable law of the 
survival of the fittest decided the result. 

At New Orleans the usual French governor appointed by 
the King stood at the head of affairs. He had autocratic power 
over the general enterprises of the colony — a little Louis XIV. in 
his domain. But as others were subject to his orders, so was he 
likewise subject to the minutest whim of the court of France. 
Standing next to the governor, and taking the place of the in- 
tendant of Canada, was the comissaire-ordinnateur, a sort of 
commissary general, who had control of the stores and regu- 
lated details of administration to which the governor could not 
well give attention. He was also to keep a watch on the actions 
of the governor, and report any irregularities to the King. There 
was consequently at no infrequent intervals bad feeling or regu- 
lar feuds between the two leading officers. In the early period, 
military law alone prevailed and was administered by a military 
tribunal, composed of these two officials. The advice of the priests 
was doubtless of some value, but not regularly sought. After 
1715 the tribunal was enlarged and its powers more specifically 
defined. With the advent of the Mississippi Company, a royal 
edict was promulgated (1719) which erected a Superior Council 
for the free administration of justice and the general affairs of 
the colony. It was to be composed of such directors of the com- 
pany as might chance to be in the colony, the governor, two lieu- 
tenant-governors, the King's attorney-general, the King's com- 
missary, and four other persons. This council was to share the 
former power of the governor, who was no longer absolute. 

In 1720 a proclamation was issued informing the inhabitants 
that they could get supplies from the company's stores at fixed 
rates, and that they must send all of their products to these stores, 
where they would be paid for at the scheduled prices. The 
straight-jacket trade policy which was preparing the peasantry 
of France for the Revolution and the Reign of Terror was now to 



New Orleans and French Louisiana. 27 

be strictly enforced in Louisiana. To this commercial servitude 
was added the restriction that the inhabitants were not to leave the 
colony without the consent of the company. The vine, hemp, 
flax, all products that could come into competition with those of 
the mother country were proscribed. In 1724 a severe Black 
Code was enacted, Jews were forever expelled from the colony, 
and every mode of worship except the Roman Catholic was pro- 
hibited. 

One thing to be noticed about Louisiana in contrast with 
Canada was the small influence of the priests. Soon after the 
founding of the colony the Curate de la Vente, who was the 
spiritual head of the settlement, had essayed to play a leading 
part in temporal affairs, whereupon Bienville had sent him about 
his business. He then became a malcontent, and had much to do 
with Bienville's dismissal as governor, but the priests were never 
able to gain as much control of the government as they did in 
Canada. Louisiana was divided for ecclesiastical administration 
into three districts. The Carmelites had control of the settle- 
ments to the east of the mouth of the Mississippi ; the Capuchin 
territory reached from New Orleans to the Illinois, and the Jes- 
uits were allotted the Wabash and Illinois district. The morals 
of the people were naturally low and the difficulties besetting the 
work of the priests were multitudinous. In addition to their 
task of administering to the spiritual wants of the dissolute colon- 
ists was the urgent call for the conversion of the Indians. In 
Canada their labors of love had often preserved the French from 
Indian hostility; in the feeble condition of Louisiana such a mis- 
sion was even more indispensable. 

The general affairs of the colony, it must be admitted, were 
poorly managed. Bienville left Louisiana in 1743, never to re- 
turn. He had spent nearly half a century in honest service for 
the upbuilding of the territory ; but the most that can be said for 
him is that he was faithful and patriotic. He was sensible and 
public spirited, but had none of the brilliance, the tact, or the 
compelling energy that characterized Champlain and La Salle in 



28 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

Canada, or Dupleix and Labourdonnais in India. Yet it must 
not be forgotten that the materials with which he had to build 
were inferior, that the obstacles in his pathway were many and 
stupendous, and that to him Louisiana owed more than to any 
other individual. He is rightly styled the father of Louisiana. 

After the departure of Bienville, few things of importance 
occurred before the transfer of Louisiana to Spain. The Mar- 
quis of Vaudreuil was sent over as governor, and served until his 
services were required in Canada. He was then succeeded (1753) 
by Kerleric, who held the office during the remainder of the 
French ownership. The population of the territory steadily 
grew, but the state of affairs was ever critical. Official corruption 
was common; political cliques and factions kept up a perpetual 
tumult ; and rival religious organizations intrigued for each other's 
ruin. The finances were necessarily unstable, and the paper- 
money curse periodically appeared. The annual budget continu- 
ally increased. For the first twenty years of the colony's history, 
the annual expense to the King of France was about 150,000 
livres. The budget now ran from half a million to a million 
livres a year, a large part of which must come from the hard- 
pressed treasury of the mother country. No wonder that the 
French ministers were ready to part with a colony which had 
been a constant burden for half a century and showed as yet no 
signs of ever becoming self-sustaining! 

But with Louisiana was destined to go the whole of New 
France. The visions of Champlain and La Salle were never to 
materialize. The glittering fabric of empire, which had cost so 
much blood and treasure, which had inspired so many heroic deeds 
and sustained so many despairing souls, was woven too thinly to 
stand the stress of conflict. The attenuated settlement, stretching 
from Acadia to New Orleans, was no match for the compact 
mass of English-American citizens, clustered on the Atlantic 
coast, whose industry had made them ojaulent, whose government 
had made them self-sufficient, and whose number had grown to ten 
times that of their rivals. The French and Indian War was a 



New Orleans and French Louisiana. 29 

struggle of England against France, of the self-governing colo- 
nies against the paternal absolutism of New France ; the result is 
not far to seek, nor does its events need to be recounted. Louisiana 
played little part in the struggle, but was present at the division 
of spoils. In 1761 the French ambassador presented a memorial to 
the Spanish government, in which he confessed that France was 
unable to protect Louisiana, and solicited the aid of Spain. On 
November 3, 1 762, a treaty was signed at Fontainebleau, by which 
the French King, "from the pure impulse of his generous heart" 
ceded to his "cousin of Spain" all the country "known under the 
name of Louisiana." But France retained possession, and in 
February of the next year, a new distribution of territory was 
made by the Peace of Paris. According to this treaty, the part 
of Louisiana west of the Mississippi, together with the island of 
New Orleans, was left to Spain, in return for aid given to France 
during the war ; Spain ceded Florida to England, getting Havana 
in return ; Canada and the remaining territory east of the Missis- 
sippi, went to England. Thus crumbled into ruins, by virtue of 
its own infirmities and before the growing enterprise of the Eng- 
lish colonies, aided by the genius of Pitt and Wolfe, the magnifi- 
cent conception of a great French empire, within whose huge 
dimensions the paltry acres of Old France could be hidden with 
as much ease as the political shrewdness of le Grand Monarque 
amidst the statesmen of our Constitutional Convention of 1787. 



T" 



CHAPTER III. 

St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 

HE news of the transfer of Louisiana to Spain in 1763 
■ was received with consternation bj^ the loyal inhabitants 

"*" of that province. Fleeting rumors of the first transfer 
had reached them, but they had been cast aside with in- 
credulity. Were they to be bartered away as merchandise .'' Were 
their national character and rights so far forgotten that they were 
to be transformed into Englishmen or Spaniards without their 
consent .'' What was to become of their property, their laws, their 
society? Was the prospect of a glorious empire to be renounced 
by the dastardly impolicy of surrender on the very threshold of 
success.^ It was only with the publication of the King's Procla- 
mation that the bitter truth went home; and then, for a brief 
moment, the spirit that glorified the Fourth of July, 1776, stirred 
their wrathful souls. 

Governor Kerleric was recalled in 1763, and M. D'Abbadie 
sent out to succeed him under the title of director-general. Ker- 
leric was accused of extravagance and peculation, probably not 
without justice, and cast into the Bastile. It was to D'Abbadie 
that Louis XV. addressed his communication which was published 
in October, 1764. D'Abbadie was instructed to deliver up the 
country to the Spanish governor, and the colonists were assured 
that under his Catholic Majesty the "protection and good will" 
which they had heretofore enjoyed would be extended, their re- 
ligion and property would not be disturbed, nor would the ordi- 
nary course of justice be interrupted. Even the Superior Council 
was to be continued. Indeed, so gradual was the change, so 
little energy did the Spanish government show in assuming con- 
trol, that the people began to imagine the transfer was only a 

(30) 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 31 

ruse to circumvent in some way the English, and when, more than 
a year later, the Spanish governor arrived, his dilatory tactics 
confirmed the suspicion. 

Meantime, the colonists had not remained silent. The Su- 
perior Coimcil had invited each parish to send some of its most 
distinguished citizens as delegates to an assembly which met at 
New Orleans. Resolutions were passed, humbly supplicating the 
King of France not to cast them away from his benign control, 
and Jean Milhet, the wealthiest merchant of the colony, was sent 
to carry it to the throne. When he arrived in Paris he called 
upon the aged Bienville, who went along to help plead the cause 
with the King's minister, Choiseul. But Choiseul informed them 
that Louisiana could not maintain its precarious existence without 
an enormous expense which France was utterly incapable of 
meeting. "Is it not better," said he, "that Louisiana should be 
given away to a friend and faithful ally, than be wrested from 
us by an hereditary foe?" 

The failure of this mission shrouded the colony in gloom. 
The dismal outlook grew drearier still when in March, 1766, Don 
Antonio de Ulloa arrived as governor to take possession in the 
name of the King of Spain. Ulloa, was a man of the highest dis- 
tinction in science and letters. He held high rank in the Spanish 
navy, and had been equally successful as a civil administrator. 
His courage was undoubted and his humanity far exceeded that 
of the usual Spanish official. The instructions given to him by 
Charles III. were also quite liberal. He was accompanied by 
other civil officers, but since the necessary military force had not 
yet arrived, it was decided to postpone taking formal possession 
until the arrival of more troops. 

Such liberalism was new to the inhabitants of Louisiana, 
and they proceeded at once to misinterpret it. Those who had 
received Ulloa with cold and sullen respect began to foment se- 
dition. The Superior Council asked him to show his commission, 
whereupon he informed them that he was not yet ready to take 
charge, and that if he were, he could only deal with Aubry, who 



32 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

had succeeded D'Abbadie as governor. This rude blow at the 
authority of the Superior Council made matters worse. A secret 
association was formed throughout the region and a conspiracy 
was hatched to drive out the Spaniards, with Ulloa at their head. 
A petition to the Superior Council urging this action was pre- 
pared by two members of the Council and sent around for signa- 
tures. It was presented at a meeting of the Council in October, 
1768. At the same time, a large body of the insurgents marched 
into New Orleans under arms. Ulloa, glad to escape to his books 
from such a turbulent position, prudently took to a ship and sailed 
away. 

The chief objects of the Revolution were now accomplished, 
and the people, trained to despotic government, shrank back in 
terror at the boldness of their own actions. What would France 
think? What would Spain do? The leaders soon found them- 
selves isolated, while the few Spaniards that were left were being 
courted. How diiferent the followers of Samuel Adams and 
John Hancock when the decree of George III. had declared those 
sterling patriots beyond the reach of pardon ! One of the lead- 
ing conspirators, Foucault, turned traitor to his confederates. 
The others knew not what to do. They appealed to the English 
at Pensacola, but their emissaries were coldly received. Wild 
schemes of proclaiming a republic with Lafrenere as protector 
filled the air. 

But the suspense was soon relieved by the news that General 
Alexander O'Reilly had been appointed to succeed Ulloa as gov- 
ernor and was coming with a large military force. He arrived 
in July, 1769, with 2,600 choice Spanish troops, bearing orders 
to punish the leaders of the insurrection, and to establish Spanish 
control and administration. O'Reilly was an Irishman whose 
ability and courage had overcome the prejudice and pride of the 
Spanish dons and had raised him to the front rank in the army 
of Charles III. His military services were long and distinguished, 
and he was equally able as an administrator. 

The leaders against the Spanish in Louisiana saw the use- 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 33 

lessness of resisting such a force, and O'Reilly received a hearty 
welcome. His attitude was conciliatory and flattering. A proc- 
lamation was issued, granting pardon to all save a few of the lead- 
ing conspirators. The inhabitants were all required to take the 
oath of allegiance to the Spanish King, while several members 
of the Superior Council and a number of others, twelve in all, 
were shot or sent to Havana, where they were safely ensconced in 
Moro Castle. 

On the morning of the eighteenth of August, 1769^ amidst 
booming cannon and shouts of "Viva el Rey !" "Viva el Rey !" the 
flag of France was lowered from the gate of New Orleans, while 
that of Spain was raised to take its place. Then O'Reilly, ac- 
companied by his retinue of officers and the former French gov- 
ernor, Aubry, led the procession around the square and to the 
cathedral, where addresses were made, and a solemn Te Deum 
was sung, during which the fleet and army renewed their salutes. 
These pious services over, they returned to the public square, 
where the ceremonies were completed. Thus ended the supremacy 
of the French in the land where, ninety-seven years before. La 
SaUe, with superb genius, had planted the fleurs-de-lis, as the 
basis of a new empire to be carved out of the vast, unknown conti- 
nent. 

The colonial government set up by Spain was not materially 
different from that established by France. The governor was to be 
assisted by Loyola, commissary of v/ar and intendant; Gayarre, 
contador or royal comptroller; Navarro, treasurer; and a num- 
ber of minor officials. The Superior Council was to be replaced 
by a Cabildo, composed of six perpetual regidors, two ordinary 
alcades, an attorney-general-syndic, and a clerk. The Cabildo 
was to sit weekly and to be presided over by the governor. The 
offices of regidor and clerk were to be purchased at auction, and 
were transferable. The ordinary alcades were elected annually, 
and performed functions similar to those of an English justice 
of the peace. After the organization of the cabildo, O'Reilly 

3 



34 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

gave up the goA'ernorship^ and remained in general charge as 
captain-general. The French code of laws was succeeded by a 
set of regulations based upon the laws of Castile and the code 
of the Indies ; but since both French and Spanish law were based 
upon the Roman law, the changes were not burdensome. 

While these things were occurring about New Orleans, inter- 
esting and important events were taking place in Upper Louis- 
iana. Early in 1764, Major Loftus arrived at New Orleans and 
started up the river to take possession of the Illinois country, 
in the name of the King of Great Britain. He was fired upon 
by the Indians, and returned, loudly and unjustly condemning the 
French as instigators of the attack. Meanwhile, the French 
commandant, St. Ange de Bellerive, continued to exercise control. 
Early in 1760, however. Captain Sterling reached Kaskaskia, and 
took possession in the name of the English monarch. A procla- 
mation was issued, allowing the Catholics freedom of worship, 
promising to those who would remain and take the oath of allegi- 
ance and fidelity to their new sovereign the rights and immuni- 
ties of British subjects, and assuring perfect freedom to those 
who desired to leave the English possessions. This latter privi- 
lege was accepted by many who preferred Spanish to English 
domination. Some departed from the colony in disgust, while 
many others crossed the Mississippi into Missouri. Among these 
was the French commandant St. Ange de Bellerive, who went over 
to St. Louis and became the first governor of Upper Louisiana 
under SjDain. 

St. Louis was at this time a growing village of small dimen- 
sions. Its founding was of no slight consequence in the history 
of Louisiana. At the time of the cession of Illinois to the Eng- 
lish, all of the leading settlements of Upper Louisiana, except 
Ste. Genevieve, were on the east bank of the river. The French 
desired a strong post on the Missouri side, through which the 
trade of the northwest could be diverted from the hated English. 
There was no naoney for such an enterprise, and the old expedient 
of granting a monopoly was resorted to. Early in 1763, Monsieur 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 35 

D'Abbadie granted to Maxent, Laclede & Company a monopoly 
of the fur trade with the Indians of Missouri and the region west 
of the Mississippi, as far north as the St. Peter. This firm became 
generally known as "The Louisiana Fur Company," and they 
had an expedition ready to start by the third of August. 

The leader of the enterprise was Pierre Laclede Liguest, 
(he generally signed himself simply Pierre Laclede), who was at 
this time thirty-nine years old. He was a tall, dark, black-eyed 
Frenchman, spirited, enterprising, ambitious. Reared in the 
shadow of the Pyrenees, he was familiar with both French and 
Spanish character and customs, which fitted him for the great 
Avork he was to perform. Peering from the narrow confines of 
his own home to the hazy continent beyond the sea, his restless 
imagination began to picture a settlement in far away Louisiana 
where wealth would flow freely into his purse and the name of 
Pierre Laclede would be supreme. With a number of friends he 
set out for an adventurous career in the new world. He arrived 
in New Orleans in 1755 and was soon head of a commercial es- 
tablishment. In 1763 he became junior partner in "The Louis- 
iana Fur Company." This gave him his coveted opportunity for 
he was put in charge of the expedition to found a post near the 
mouth of the Missouri to control the fur trade of the northwest. 

After three months of toil against the impetuous current of 
the Mississippi in unshapel}^ and heavily laden boats, the mem- 
bers of Laclede's party reached St. Genevieve. But finding there 
no suitable place to store their goods, they crossed to Fort 
Chartres which was made headquarters for the winter. From 
there Laclede, with a small partj^, explored the west bank of the 
river up to the mouth of the Missouri. After careful examination 
he selected a site for the new trade center, and later generations 
have proved the wisdom of his choice. It was none other than 
the liigh and delightful spot upon which the present metropolis 
of St. Louis stands, a situation combining the excellences of 
"healthful residence and of matchless facilities for commercial 
exchange." He returned to Fort Chartres and enthusiastically 



36 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

predicted that "he intended to establish a settlement which might 
become hereafter one of the finest cities of America." 

On this expedition he was accompanied by the youthful 
Auguste Chouteau, whose name was to be indissolubly connected 
with the founding of St. Louis, and whose brother, Pierre Chou- 
teau, was to become the patriarch in the development of the fur 
trade of the west. These brothers were sons of Madame Chouteau, 
who accompanied Laclede on his voyage up the Mississippi, and 
with whom she lived in civil law marriage after separation from 
her Catholic husband. Monsieur Chouteau. In the spring of 
1764, Auguste Chouteau, then only thirteen years of age, was 
sent in charge of about thirty workmen to begin felling the pri- 
meval forest for the new settlement. Laclede soon followed, and 
the first buildings were erected on the block bounded by First, 
Second, Walnut and Market streets. Here was erected the com- 
pany's store, and in the immediate neighborhood, the cabins of the 
men, the home of Laclede, and in 1770, the first church in St. 
Louis. The embryo village was named St. Louis in honor of Louis 
IX., the patron saint of the reigning monarch, Louis XV., of 
France. Such was the beginning of the future capital of Upper 
Louisiana, the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley, to be the 
scene one hundred and forty years later of the grandest memorial 
celebration the world has yet seen. 

The development of St. Louis was a brilliant contrast to the 
tedious and painful growth of the other villages of the Louisiana 
Territory. Circumstances favored the child of Laclede, for- 
tune smiled upon her, and almost immediately she sprang into 
prominence. Within a few months St. Ange came over with the 
French garrison from Ft. Chartres, and was followed by many of 
the French families from Kaskaskia and Cahokia, who turned 
with disgust from the clumsy, self-governing English intrv^ders. 
Within five years the hill-tops overlooking the stately Mississippi 
were dotted with the cabins of some seven hundred inhabitants. 
A family of young villages soon sprang up about the mother set- 
tlement, such as Carondelet, St. Charles, Bonhomme, Florissant, 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 37 

and Portage des Sioux. The Indian trade was pouring wealth 
into the pockets of the natives, and a degree of prosperity un- 
known in French America prevailed. 

The life of the early French settlers in Louisiana was highly 
picturesque, a life chequered with extremes of light and shadow, 
joy and sorrow, religious fervor mingled with utter frivolity, ease 
never free from the shadow of hardship, and calamity following 
close upon the heels of prosperity. Contrasted with the sombre 
intelligence of New England Puritanism or the lonely brilliance 
of the Virginia planter, the social structure was loose and hollow, 
but withal bright and attractive. The facile, adaptable French- 
man, with free and easy manners, a vivacious spirit, and a fond- 
ness for display, mixed readily with the Indians and won their 
lasting friendship. They took naturally to the wild life and en- 
joyed the license, the freedom, the exhilaration of the pure air 
of the prairies and the forests. The young man became a 
voyageur on the rivers, then, perchance, drifted into the woods 
as a hunter and trapper. Ignoring the monopolistic spirit of the 
French authorities, he began clandestine trading as a coureur- 
des-bois. He purchased his Indian squaw with gifts, and lived 
on the outskirts of the Indian camp. His visits to the settle- 
ments were spent in carousals and debauchery. Civilization was 
left behind, and the instruction of the priests forgotten. The 
canoe, the gun, the dog, the trap, were his companions, the rude 
wilderness hut his home. But by and by the suppleness of youth 
gives way to the infirmities brought on by hardship, while the 
conservatism of age tempers the wild heedlessness of youth. The 
coureur begins to yearn for the quiet of the settlement where he 
returns to build a cabin within whose shadows he can smoke and 
chat away his declining years. Meanwhile a family of half- 
breeds has grown up, and his sons have taken his place at the oar 
and in the camp. Such is the adventurous and romantic life of 
the coureur. 

But he is only a type, the forerunner of progress in western 
life. St. Louis had its quota of these, but not the large percent- 



38 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

age found in the Illinois towns. Stable settlers came down from 
Canada; the church crept in from the North and South; Creoles 
and Frenchmen came up from New Orleans ; Englishmen drifted 
in from the East; and emigrants still crossed over from Spain 
and France. Merchants^ traders, artisans, adventurers, priests, 
soldiers, men of ability, men of ambition, men of culture, were 
not lacking. St. Louis combined many of the characteristics of 
Canada, the Illinois country, and New Orleans, without being like 
either. More democratic and progressive ideas were adopted. 
Instead of clinging to the old French idea of a commune, with 
its system of common tillage, the land was parcelled out for in- 
dividual ownership. Instead of depending on individual hunters, 
trappers, and boatmen, fur companies, transportation companies, 
and mining companies were organized. In fact, St. Louis be- 
came a real western, village, and only the larger infusion of sturdy 
English blood was needed to make her typical of the rapid taming 
of the vast expanse of the west, which a century has jeweled with 
a thousand cities and made to blossom with luxuriance and wealth. 
The government of St. Louis was similar to that of other 
French towns. At first there was no organized civil government. 
The mechanics and hunters and traders who came with Laclede 
were bound together by common interests and were subject to his 
orders. Laclede was never disposed to assume civil responsibility, 
and about the only governmental function necessary was the allot- 
ment of land for use until the inchoate title thus acquired could 
be confirmed by some higher authority. With the arrival of St. 
Ange and his soldiers and the other Illinois immigrants, some 
form of government became necessary. By common consent, St. 
Ange was chosen de facto governor, awaiting the arrival of the 
Spaniards. He was a man of mature years, being then over 
sixty, who had seen much service in the French army. He was 
no less able as an administrator than as a soldier, and his tact, 
fairness, and practical intelligence soon proved the wisdom of his 
selection. Associated with St. Ange in the civil administration 
were Judge Lefebre, who had control of legal matters, and Joseph 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 39 

Labusciere, secretary and notary public. With this simple form 
of self-government, the town started, and later the director-gen- 
eral of Louisiana, Aubry, completed the organization by appoint- 
ing two judges, an attorney-general, and a notary. Under this 
government, St. Louis continued until the arrival of the Spaniards 
in 1770. 

This event was heralded by the arrival of O'Reilly at New 
Orleans. As soon as the commandant had overawed the rebellious 
Frenchmen about the mouth of the ]Mississippi, he dispatclied Don 
Pedro Piernas with a body of Spanish troops to St. Louis to take 
possession of Upper Louisiana. Piernas arrived in the spring of 
1770 and quietly assumed control. He was a man of ability and 
rare tact. Several weeks were spent in the hospitable home of 
Laclede, cultivating the friendship of the people and familiariz- 
ing himself with the situation. On May 20, as lieutenant-gov- 
ernor in charge of Upper Louisiana, he assumed the reins of 
government without opposition. Thus passed from the control 
of the French the last foot of soil within the present bounds of the 
United States. 

But with a wisdom too uncommon among Spanish governors, 
no radical changes were made. The venerable and popular St. 
Ange was made captain of infantry in the Spanish service. The 
minor offices were filled with Frenchmen. All the land titles 
granted under the French regime were confirmed and a French 
surveyor, INIartin Duralde, was appointed to define the bounds of 
the various .estates. Conciliation was the watchword. Governor 
Piernas himself married a French woman, and the Spanish force 
of six officers and twenty men was soon lost in the spirit of the 
village. 

St. Louis continued in the even tenor of its way to develop 
and prosper. Governor Piernas was superseded in May, 1775, 
by Don Francisco Cruzat, whose nature was not less kindly and 
whose political discretion was not less conspicuous than that of 
Piernas. But the political content of the people was rudely upset 
in 1778 by the harshness and rapacity of Cruzat's successor, Fer- 



40 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

nando de Leybe. During De Leybe's administration two events of 
importance occurred. The first of these was the death of Pierre 
Laclede, the father of the settlement, in 1778. In the four- 
teen years since Laclede laid out the town of St. Louis, he had 
not been idle: While his name occupies little space in the politi- 
cal history of the region, his services in building up her trade 
and commerce were incalculable. He was almost constantly on 
the road, establishing new trading posts, making alliances with 
Indian tribes, and opening up new relations with New Orleans 
and Europe. It was while returning from New Orleans that he 
was smitten with a fatal illness and carried to a military post at 
the mouth of the Arkansas, where he died at the age of fifty-four. 
He was buried in the wilderness on the south bank of the Arkan- 
sas, but when, in later years, a grateful people desired to erect 
a monument to his memory it was found that the insiduous cur- 
rent of the river had washed his remains into the Mississippi to 
join those of its great discoverer. 

The other event was an attack of the Indians which might 
easily have proved tragic. While the heroic struggle was going 
on between Great Britain and the embattled farmers of the At- 
lantic slope, the echoes of battle scarcely caused a thrill in the 
placid calm of the wilderness center. In 1778 Colonel George 
Rogers Clark had captured Kaskaskia and Cahokia without shed- 
ding a drop of blood, but the Spanish city rested secure. Gov- 
ernor Cruzat had matured a plan of defense for St. Louis, but 
had been removed before putting it into execution. The city 
was defenseless in the hands of the incompetent de Leybe, when 
in 1780 the Indians, inspired by the British to the north, de- 
scended the Mississippi in search of scalps. They feared to at- 
tack Cahokia and a predatory band crossed the river. The plan 
was to capture the unarmed men in the fields and then attack the 
city; but so few men happened to be at their labors the day of 
the attack that they made only a half-hearted attack on the fort 
and decided to rest content with a half dozen scalps and a few 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 41 

prisoners, most of whom were released after the peace of 1783.* 
Governor De Leybe ended his dissipations with death in 
1780, and the popular Cruzat was recalled. Cruzat was suc- 
seeded by Don Manuel Perez in 1787. It was during his rule 
that the system of inducing immigration by the offer of large 
tracts of land was begun. His successor, Trudeau, extended the 
policy, and some of the grants reached as high as thirty thousand 
acres. Dreams of opulence began to attract settlers to the hither- 
to sluggish village, and frenzy of speculation disturbed its worted 
repose. New settlements were springing up along the rivers. 
With the arrival of Charles Delassus as Governor in 1799 (he had 
been promoted from the post commandership at New Madrid) a 
census of Upper Louisiana was taken. It was found that the 
population of the whole region was 6,028. Of these 883 were 
slaves and 197 were freedmen. The population of St. Louis was 
925. Delassus remained in control of Upper Louisiana until its 
transfer to the United States in 1803. 

While St. Louis and Upper Louisiana were growing apace, 
New Orleans and Lower Louisiana were making a similar de- 
velopment. Spanish regulation, or rather restriction, of com- 
merce threatened at first to stifle prosperity, but when O'Reilly 
gave place as governor to Don Luis de Unzago in August, 1772, 
the evils were somewhat mitigated. Ulloa had, through the 
French Governor, Aubry, restricted trade to a half-dozen Spanish 
seaports, and required that all imports and exports should be car- 
ried in Spanish vessels. Since these ports could not supply the 
traflSc most needed in the colony, the only resource that enabled 
the colonists to subsist was a clandestine trade with the English. 
The treaty of 1763 had reserved to the English the free naviga- 
tions of the Mississippi, and large numbers of English immigrants 
had located at Bayou Manchac, Baton Rouge and Natchez Their 
vessels ploughed up and down the river and the thrifty traders 

♦There is a historical controversy regarding the extent and complicity 
of the British in this famous Indian attack on St. Louis. Not having been 
able as yet to ascertain the truth from documentary sources, the most 
reasonable account has been accepted. 



42 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

had established floating warehouses fitted up as stores which sup- 
plied at the water's edge the goods and slaves needed by the 
planters, in return for the produce of their farms. This smug- 
gling trade was wisely Avinked at by Unzago, and the Chinese- 
like regulations, instead of Avorking to the advantage of Spain, 
gave a monopoly of the coveted trade to the English. 

One of the most serious disturbances of the colony was of a 
religious nature. This difficulty had sprung up at an early day 
between the Jesuits and the Capuchins. In 1717 the Capuchins 
had secured from the East India Company the exclusive ecclesi- 
astical jurisdiction over New Orleans and a large part of Louis- 
iana. But in 1726 the Jesuits obtained permission to settle in 
the colony and had been assigned the Upper settlements. Once 
in the colony, they began to intrigue to get control. The first 
definite attempt was made in 1755, when their superior obtained 
from the Bishop of Quebec, in whose diocese Louisiana was in- 
cluded, a commission as Grand Vicar of Louisiana. This brought 
on an open conflict with the Capuchins, which soon assumed large 
proportions; and, like most religious quarrels, was very acrimon- 
ious. The Superior Council finally decided in favor of the Capu- 
chins, but the Jesuits continued to exercise many ecclesiastical 
functions. In 1764 came the order for the expulsion of the 
Jesuits and their property, worth $180,000, was confiscated and 
sold. But the nine-lived Jesuits refused to die, and when some 
half dozen years later a similar struggle arose between the French 
and Spanish Capuchins, they were ready to fan the embers of dis- 
cord into a flame. Father Dagobert was the venerable and much 
beloved superior of the Capuchin monastery. He had shown 
much sweetness of temper, great liberality, and rare power of 
adapting his ministrations to the spirit of the people, so that 
when the Spanish assumed control of the province and Louis- 
iana became the ecclesiastical fief of the Bishop of Cuba, he was 
still left in charge. In 1772 the Bishop sent over Father Cirilo 
to investigate the afi"airs of the Church. When the report was 
made, the lenience of the French Father Dagobert was con- 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiajia. 43 

demned; but the governor stoutly defended him, and a contro- 
versj^ sprang up between the Bishop of Cuba and Governor 
Unzago. The matter was appealed to Spain, where a compi'o- 
mise was eifected, through which peace again entered the reverend 
fraternity. 

The administration of Governor Unzago lasted from 1772 to 
February, 1777- He was a mild and beneficent ruler, and by a 
policy of such exceeding liberality that it failed to meet the com- 
plete approval of the authorities at Madrid, he had increased the 
prosperity of the colony and done much to reconcile the French- 
men to Spanish control. The inhabitants were thriving on the 
illicit trade he allowed, and it was with universal regret that he 
announced his intention to leave. His successor was Don Ber- 
nardo de Galvez, then colonel of the regiment in Louisiana. 

Galvez was only twenty-one years old, but he was a young 
man of great ability and unbounded energy. His father was 
viceroy of Mexico, and his uncle the most powerful man in the 
service of the Spanish King. His administration was no less 
liberal than that of his predecessor, and lasted to the close of the 
American Revolution. It was very important in the development 
of Louisiana, and for the aid rendered to the patriot cause. 

The opening months of his rule were signalized by the de- 
struction of the English monopoly of the carrying trade of Louis- 
iana, and its transfer to the French. In 1776 the courts of 
France and Spain had agreed to open trade between Louisiana 
and the French West Indes. A short time after the accession of 
Galvez two French commissioners, Villars and d'Aunoy, arrived 
at New Orleans to control this traffic. The West India trade 
proved profitable, and various steps were taken to encourage agri- 
culture, particularly the raising of tobacco. Imports came in 
from Cuba and other places, specie became more plentiful, ne- 
groes were introduced in larger numbers, industry began to thrive. 
Plans to attract immigration were not forgotten. Large numbers, 
499 in one body for example, came over from the Canary Islands 
at the King's expense. They were provided Mdth lands and 



44 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

houses and cattle and farming utensils ; a church was erected for 
them in each village they established, and provisions out of the 
general commissary were supplied until they could become self- 
sustaining. The policy of making extensive land grants, which 
proved so successful in Upper Louisiana, was inauguarted by 
Galvez and extended by his successor, Miro. Munificent grants 
lured many English settlers to cross over into Louisiana and take 
the oath of allegiance to the Spanish monarch. In 1788 Colonel 
George Morgan was given an immense tract of land about seventy 
miles below the mouth of the Ohio and led a large party to the 
site of New Madrid, Missouri. Other settlements grew up in 
like manner and thus, by a general infiltration of English blood 
was Louisiana prepared for its future transfer. 

The aid to the American cause supplied through Louisiana 
during the Revolution should not be forgotten. One of the first 
official acts of the spirited young Galvez was to seize and con- 
fiscate eleven richly laden English ships engaged in the smuggling- 
trade about New Orleans. The order of the Spanish court to 
render secret assistance to the Americans was seized with alacrity. 
Oliver Pollock and Captain Willing came down the Ohio and 
Mississippi from Fort Pitt and were aided in the purchase of 
powder and military stores for the American army. Gayarre, in 
his History of Louisiana, states that this secret aid amounted to 
seventy thousand dollars. Galvez was instructed to hold in trust 
any British settlement on the Mississippi, which the Americans 
might take and turn over to him — a peculiar bit of responsibility 
the Americans were pretty sure not to ask him to assume. But it 
was in 1779 when the Spaniards unsheathed the sword and joined 
hands with the United States and France against England that 
Galvez took the field, and, with great dash and courage, drove the 
English out of Florida and the Louisiana forts of Natchez, Baton 
Rouge, and Bayou Manchac. This capture of the Floridas was 
of peculiar importance to the United States since it left them at 
the conclusion of the war in possession of the decrepit monarchy 
from whose nerveless fingers they were certain at some future 
date to drop into the open arms of the young republic. 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 45 

The administration of Galvez ended with the year 1784. He 
was succeeded by Don Estevan Miro, who remained in control 
seven years. He possessed none of the brilliance of Galvez, but 
was a man of good education, sound intelligence, a high sense of 
honor, and an abundance of energy. At the opening of his ad- 
ministration a census was taken which showed that the total popu- 
lation of Louisiana had increased from 13,538 in 1769 to 31,433 
in 1785. By virtue of the arrival of a large number of Acadians 
and a liberal policy, this number was increased by more than 
10,000 in three years. By the time of the transfer in 1803 the 
number had reached about 50,000. The population of New Or- 
leans grew from 3,000 in 1769^ to 5,000 in 1785, and to more than 
8,000 in 1803. 

Miro was succeeded in 1792 by Franqois Louis Hector, 
Baron de Carondelet, who became governor and intendant of the 
provinces of Louisiana and West Florida. Carondelet was a 
native of Flanders who had risen by great zeal and ability to a 
responsible position in the service of Spain. The five years of his 
governorship were filled with stirring and significant events. 
The French Revolution Avas sending out its thrills of hope and 
horror to the uttermost parts of the earth, and Louisiana, still 
largely a French province, reaped a rich harvest of its excite- 
ment. First came a number of royalist emigres who were re- 
ceived with joy and given large tracts of land upon which to 
found settlements. Then came the agents of the French Jacobins 
who published an inflammatory address from "The Freemen of 
France to their Brothers in Louisiana." 

"The hour has struck, Frenchmen of Louisiana," it said. 
"The moment has arrived when despotism must disappear from 
the earth. . . . Now is the time to cease being slaves of a 
government, to which you were shamefully sold; and no longer 
to be led on like a herd of cattle, by men who with one word 
can strip you of what you hold most dear — liberty and property. 
Compare with your situation that of your friends — the free Amer- 
icans. Look at the province of Kentucky, deprived of outlets 



46 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

for its products^ and yet^ notwithstanding these obstacles, and 
merely through the genial influence of a free government, rap- 
idly increasing its population and wealth, and already presaging 
a prosperity which causes the Spanish government to tremble." 

So active were the Jacobin agents that an expedition was 
planned to wrest Louisiana from Spain by the aid of Kentucky 
riflemen and set up there the standard of a free French republic. 
But the energy and address of Carondelet, together with the firm- 
ness and prudence of Washington, prevented such a rash enter- 
prise. The net result of this disturbance, however, accrued to the 
interest of the United States. Her citizens in the Southwest were 
determined to have the free navigation of the Mississippi, and 
various intrigues and incipient buccaneering expeditions had 
threatened direful calamities. The accumulated dangers were 
made known to the Spanish court where the shrewd and unscrupu- 
lous Don Manuel Godoy reigned supreme. The treaty between 
the United States and Spain which had long been pending was 
signed at Madrid, October 20, 1795, — thus registering the first 
real diplomatic triumph of the young Republic. The magnani- 
mous Godoy gave the United States all she asked, — a settlement 
of the boundary of the Floridas, free navigation of the Missis- 
sippi, and a port of deposit at New Orleans free of duty for 
three years. The term of three years was to be extended by 
subsequent negotiation; or, in lieu of this, another point on the 
island of New Orleans was to be assigned as a place of deposit 
for American trade. 

The time limit set to the privilege of deposit was a subter- 
fuge on the part of the astute Godoy to relieve the danger of 
an immediate descent of the determined Westerners upon New 
Orleans, and to give time to mature some other scheme to avoid 
extension. Little did he realize that within this time the enjoy- 
ment of the privilege would become so common as to be felt to be 
a natural right, and that its removal would arouse such towering 
wrath that it would force the hand of the distant government 
at Washington. But such was the case and the manifest destiny 



St. Louis and Spanish Louisiana. 47 

of Louisiana was wrought out of the diplomatic muddle within 
five years of the time limit set by Godoy in the Treaty of Madrid 
to the unobstructed navigation of the Mississippi. 



CHAPTER IV. 

A DIPLOMATIC DRAMA: THE GREAT PURCHASE. 

ON the fourth day of March, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was 
inaugurated President of the United States. He did not 
ride up to the capitol alone, dismount, hitch his horse to 
a fence post, and then walk into the audience room to 
read his fifteen-minute inaugural, as stated by many of the old 
school books ; but what was more significant was that he was a true 
democrat, mild, pacific, optimistic, trusting implicitly the ultimate 
sense of the American people. He was an aristocrat, born and 
bred, yet few men ever lived who had a more pious contempt for 
the tinsel glitter of royalty, or the noisy exhibition of rank and 
supposed social superiority. Of personal magnetism, oratory, dash 
and verve, of qualities that compel respect and herald leadership 
from afar, Jefferson had almost none; yet few entered his pres- 
ence without feeling the magic spell of his peculiar power. He 
was six feet two-and-a-half inches tall, loosely built, red-headed, 
sandy-complexioned. A sunny countenance and a bland smile 
covered a political cunning that suriDrised his friends and discom- 
fited his foes. He was approachable, friendly, even-tempered, a 
brilliant conversationalist, dabbled in science, philosophy, litera- 
ture, agriculture, and was never at a loss for a plane on which to 
meet an individual or a clever expedient to avoid a difficulty. His 
manner was rather stiff and awkward as a result of natural timid- 
ity. He sat in "a lounging manner, on one hip commonly, and with 
one of his shoulders elevated much above the other," presenting a 
"shackling air." His dress was plain and reckless, and his red- 
plush waistcoat, corduroy breeches, yarn stockings and slippers 
down at the heels, afforded no end of merriment to his aristocratic 
opponents. 

(48) 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 49 

Such was the outward aspect of the man the American people 
had elected to deal on equal terms with the crowned heads of 
Europe, with Pitt and Godoy, Talleyrand and Napoleon. Be- 
neath the surface, however, there burned a fiery passion for liberty, 
a zeal for the public welfare, a disinterested patriotism, and a 
determined continuity of purpose which might swerve from the 
direct path but never lost sight of the end in view. His methods 
were peaceful and conciliatory but he knew how to hint at the 
use of the "mailed fist" in a way that proved far more efi'ective 
than any amount of blustering could have done. JeflPerson had 
a choice lot of theoretical vagaries that came out in his rambling 
talk and loose writings which were seized upon by his political 
enemies to discredit his intelligence and balance as a political 
leader ; but his enthusiasm for revolutionary principles and philo- 
sophic theories were never allowed to interfere with his political 
shrewdness and supreme common sense in dealing with practical 
issues. They have sufficed, however, to cause his character to be 
misunderstood by early historians, all of the Federalist school, 
and it is only in the last quarter of a century that a true view of 
his administration has been obtained. John W. Foster has pro- 
nounced him the greatest politician America has yet produced 
and Mr. Henry Adams, whose innate hostility is too evident in his 
writings, says: "This sandy face, with hazel eyes and sunny 
aspect; this loose, shackling person; this rambling and often 
brilliant conversation, belonged to the controlling influences of 
American history, more necessary to the story than three-fourths 
of the official papers, which only hid the truth. Jefi'erson's per- 
sonality during these eight years appeared to be the government, 
and impressed itself, like that of Bonaparte, although by a dif- 
ferent process, on the mind of the nation." His cabinet was 
strong, but under the complete domination of his will, and imtil 
the days of Abraham Lincoln no man ever had such absolute con- 
trol of the nation or deserved equal credit for the acts of his ad- 
ministration, 

4> 



50 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

Across the Atlantic three towering personalities peered 
through the murky diplomatic air toward the horizon of the New 
World. One was Don Manuel Godoy, dissipated, unscrupulous, 
able, the "Prince of Peace," the despised Spaniard before whose 
diplomacy Napoleon had to bow. He was the power behind the 
throne of Spain, and his enforced retirement alone paved the way 
for the ambition of France. Behind the ambitious First Consul 
stood Talleyrand, the conspiring, trafficking, ex-Bishop of Auton, 
who was sorry that he had ever sympathized with liberty, and 
on the famous 1 8th Brumaire, betrayed the French republic with 
as little conscience as he used in his efforts to restore New 
France in the Mississippi valley. He knew not the truth, recked 
not friend or foe, scrupled at no means to restore the despotism 
and ancient glory of the French monarchy. In the breadth and 
steadiness of his purposes and in conscienceless political cunning 
he was the superior of his chief. Above all towered the match- 
less, picturesque Napoleon Bonaparte, who, as Henry Adams saj'S, 
"like Milton's Satan on his throne of state, — sat unapproachable 
on his bad eminence; or, when he moved the dusky air felt an 
unusual weight." He had turned his eyes toward America, and 
only fate, with the aid of Jefferson's pacific diplomacy, prevented 
a river of blood flooding our western wilderness. 

France had never become reconciled to the loss of Louisiana 
or ceased to hope for its restoration. When Count de Vergennes 
planned a treaty of alliance to aid our Revolutionary forefathers, 
he had a covetous eye on an American colony. He later made 
definite advances to Spain for the purchase of Louisiana, but the 
condition of the French treasury made it impossible to pay the 
price demanded by Spain. In 1795, at the Peace of Bale, the 
French republic made an effort to obtain the retrocession, and in 
1797, under the leadership of Carnot and Barthelemy, the French 
Directory offered Godoy a munificent sum for Louisiana. Talley- 
rand had wandered through America in 179'ij and correctly in- 
terpreted the spirit of our nation to rule alone in the United 
States. He returned to France, our implacable enemy, and, as 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 51 

foreign minister of the French Directory in 1798, he began his 
intrigues to shut up the aspiring nation "within the limits which 
Nature seems to have traced for them." He sent Citizen Guille- 
mardet to Spain to protest against carrying out the provisions of 
the treaty of 1795 and offer the aid of France to put "an end to 
the ambition of the Americans" who, he said, were "devoured by 
pride, ambition, and cupidity" and were ruled by the Cabinet of 
St. James. "Let the Court of Madrid cede these districts [the 
Floridas and Louisiana] to France, and from that moment the 
power of America is bounded by the limit which it may suit the 
interests and the tranquillity of France and Spain to assign her." 
The advantage to Spain was to accrue from having the French 
provinces as an impenetrable barrier to the aggressions of the 
L^nited States upon her vast dominions to the west and south. 

As a preliminary step to the success of this policy Talley- 
rand secured the dismissal of Godoy as head of the Spanish coun- 
cil ; but it was destined to failure from the venality of its author. 
The infamous X. Y. Z. fiasco drove Talleyrand out of power and 
all but provoked an open declaration of war by the United States. 

Talleyrand's next move was to ally himself with the for- 
tunes of the adventurer, Bonaparte, who returned from Egypt in 
1799 to execute his coup d'etat and become First Consul. Na- 
poleon readily accepted Talleyrand's policy and for three years 
assiduously nursed an ambition for a colonial empire in America. 
Spain had ceded her share of the Island of St. Domingo to 
France in 1795 and had now sunk to such a state of dependence 
as to be a mere tail to Napoleon's kite. The plan of the First 
Consul was soon matured. He would obtain from the craven 
Spanish mionarch the retrocession of Louisiana. This should be 
secret. Then he would use St. Domingo as an excuse for a mili- 
tary expedition and as a basis of operations from which he could 
suddenly land an army at New Orleans before the United States 
could offer any definite resistance. Once in possession of Louis- 
iana, time and his own star could dictate further conquests. Re- 
actionary Europe would gladly see democracy throttled in its last 
stronghold. 



52 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

With an energy never wanting at this period of his career, 
Napoleon set about his new task. Peace must be made with the 
United States, England, and Austria. Difficulties with the first 
two were to be settled by diplomacy; with Austria by blood and 
iron. The irascible John Adams had declared after the X. Y. Z. 
imbroglio that he would never send another minister to France un- 
der existing conditions ; but with rare self-sacrifice he braved the 
war sentiment of his party and in March, 1800, sent over a non- 
partisan commission at the request of the suppliant Talleyrand. 
Joseph Bonaparte was at the head of the French commissioners 
and negotiations made rapid progress; but the interference of 
Napoleon, whose successes in the Austrian compaign made him 
arrogant, threatened to ruin the peace. At last the Treaty of 
Morfontaine was signed, September 30, 1800, and finally ratified 
by the Senate under protest, December 19, 1801. 

Meanwhile Austria had been humbled and the Peace of 
Luneville had removed her from among Napoleon's obstacles. 
England had likewise been pacified in October, and now the way 
was clear for the prosecution of his colonial designs. So eager 
was Napoleon to get control of his projected colony that within 
six weeks after his victory at Marengo, convinced that he was 
master of the situation, without waiting for the conclusion of any 
of the above treaties, he dispatched a courier to Citizen Alquier, 
French minister at Madrid, bearing orders for him to conclude a 
treaty for the retrocession of Louisiana to France. The compen- 
sation was to be an equivalent addition to the domain of the Duke 
of Parma, son-in-law of the Spanish King. In August, 1800, 
General Berthier was sent over to take charge of the negotiations 
on account of their importance and the secrecy demanded. Ber- 
thier's instructions were contained in the famous pro jet of a 
treaty of retrocession drawn up by Talleyrand. "The French 
Republic," it said, "pledges itself to procure for the Duke of 
Parma in Italy an aggrandizement of territory to contain at 
least one million inhabitants; the Republic charges itself with 
procuring the consent of Austria and the other states interested, 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 58 

so that the Duke may be put in possession of his new territory 
at the coming peace between France and Austria. Spain on her 
side pledges herself to retrocede to the French republic the colony 
of Louisiana, with the same extent it actually has in the hands of 
Spain." She was further to add to this cession that of the two 
Floridas and give to France six ships of war. The two powers 
were to make common cause against any nation that should oppose 
the execution of this engagement. But King Charles refused to 
grant the Floridas or the six ships and Berthier was compelled to 
conclude the bargain without them. On October 1, Berthier 
signed the treaty of retrocession at San Ildefonso. The treaty 
of peace with the United States had been signed by Joseph Bona- 
parte not twenty-four hours before, but, while the one completely 
undid the work of the other, in the crooked policy of Talleyrand, 
it appeared to be a double diplomatic triumph for Napoleon. 

In the midst of success, however, the black figure of Godoy 
appeared in the shadow of the Spanish Court to mock at the 
Frenchmen's supremacy over Charles IV, As the time for the 
actual transfer approached, Lucian Bonaparte, Napoleon's ablest 
brother, was sent over to Spain to take charge of affairs and 
Godoy was recalled as the only man able to uphold the honor of 
Spain. It was now Greek against Greek, for the wily Corsican 
was met by a cold-blooded villainy equal to his own. Lucian was 
bribed into signing a treaty which thwarted Napoleon's designs 
in Portugal, and Godoy began accumulating obstacles to delay 
giving possession of Louisiana. A new treaty was signed at 
Madrid, March 21, 1801, in v/hich the bounds of the new king- 
dom for the Prince of Parma were settled. Parma was to be 
made King of Etruria (Tuscany) and was invited to Paris where 
he was entertained with patronizing hospitality. But when he 
reached his new Italian possession he found it garrisoned by 
French troops and ruled by French officers. Under such con- 
ditions he was the mere shadow of a King, and Godoy soon let it 
be understood that the delivery of Louisiana would have to wait 
on a better fulfillment of the treaty on the part of the First 



54 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

Consul. Bonaparte was furious, but Godoj'^ remained firm and 
cool. He stood by his guns and Napoleon determined to crush 
him; but in doing so he lost valuable time, and every moment was 
precious in carrying out his cherished scheme. Delay would be 
fatal; and indeed, from this time forth every hour put Napoleon 
farther away from the promised land of Louisiana. But Euro- 
pean complications, skillfull}^ wrought by the magic of the hated 
Godoy, stood not alone in the way of Napoleon's ambition ; two 
obstacles beyond the sea loomed bigger with each passing day, 
and it may be well to examine these before proceeding with the 
narrative. 

The first of these was the United States, whose interest, am- 
bition, and sturdy tenacity of purpose were well known to Talley- 
rand, if not to Napoleon. "Spain," according to Mr. Henry 
Adams, "lay alongside the south and west of the United States 
like a whale — huge, helpless, profitable. Her rule stretched from 
the Lake of the Woods to the Gulf, including Texas, Mexico, and 
California, as well as Louisiana; while still farther down. South 
America even to Patagonia was also under her sway. Far more 
than half the territory of the United States has been gained from 
this vast inert bulk, rarely in ways not open to criticism." The 
Americans did not object to the control of this immense region 
by the decrepit monarchy of Spain ; it was only when a powerful 
and aggressive nation like France began to intrigue to get pos- 
session that the United States was thoroughly aroused. Spain 
was an unloved though not a bad neighbor ; but who could foretell 
the future complications if France under the monstrous autocrat. 
Napoleon, ruled just bej'ond our sparsely-settled western border? 
Every neighbor in Europe was suffering from French aggression ; 
why should the republic of the United States fare better at the 
hands of the despoiler ? 

Fortunately for the United States, a partisan of France occu- 
pied the presidential chair. A war with France had narrowly 
been averted in 1798 by the patriotism and courage of John 
Adams. Any hasty action would have now been fatal. Napoleon 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 55 

had set his heart on an American colony and could not be bullied. 
>^Tiatever feelings we may have with regard to Jefferson's tem- 
porizing diplomacy, there can be no doubt that it was wise; for 
time ruined Napoleon's scheme and the President's policy was 
justified by the event. Jefferson had been hailed by the press in 
the United States and in Europe as the Friend of France. In 
theory he was a disciple of Rousseau, having seen at close range 
the early events of the French Revolution, and sympathized with 
the revolutionists; but the Reign of Terror had dampened his 
ardor and the coup d'etat of Napoleon had still further shocked 
his democracy. Nevertheless he came into office in 1801 feeling 
that the late rupture with France had been largely caused by the 
Federalist agitators, and determined to pursue, if possible, an 
open policy of friendship with France and Spain. He had been 
slow to believe the rumors of French designs in America, and in 
August, 1801, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston was sent as min- 
ister to France with very mild instructions. Jefferson's real feel- 
ings, however, were shown in a letter to C. C. Claiborne, who had 
been sent down as governor of the Mississippi Territory shortly 
after his accession to the Presidency. With regard to Spanish 
control of Louisiana he said: "We consider her possession of 
the adj acent country as most favorable to our interests, and should 
see with an extreme pain any other nation substituted for them." 
Before Livingston sailed rumors of the retrocession of Louis- 
iana became more definite. Although it had been nearly a year 
since Berthier had signed the treaty, such profound secrecy had 
been observed that the facts were not known. W^hen Livingston 
arrived in November, he confronted Talleyrand with the accusa- 
tion. The imperturbable ex-bishop flatly denied the treaty. Liv- 
ingston wrote the result of the interview to Jefferson, but in the 
very mail that Jefferson received Talleyrand's explicit denial 
he received a copy of the treaty itself, which the Frenchman's 
arch-enemy, Godoy, had contrived to let fall into the hands of 
Rufus King at London. Jefferson was thus rudely awakened to 
Talleyrand's treachery and became alarmed. Before proceeding 



56 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

further, however, it is necessary to notice the second trans-Atlan- 
tic obstacle to Napoleon's success ; and that was the island of St. 
Domingo. 

Before the French Revolution, St. Domingo was largely a 
Spanish island; but the French owned the western end which, 
under the old regime, was far the most important dependency of 
France. In 1789, it is said, that nearly two-thirds of the com- 
mercial interests of France centered in St. Domingo. In pros- 
perous years over seven hundred ships, employing eighty thousand 
seamen, plied the seas in handling its exports and imports valued 
at more than a hundred and forty million dollars. In a popula- 
tion of 600,000, five-sixths were full-blooded negroes held in 
rigid slavery. Of the remaining hundred thousand half were 
free mulattos without political or social privileges and half were 
French Creoles. The fifty thousand French Creoles lived off the 
labors of the other eleven-twelfths of the inhabitants in a semi- 
Parisian ease and luxury and formed an aristocratic and govern- 
ing caste. Between the mulattos and the Creoles was a natural 
feud which burst into open warfare under the electric thrill of 
liberty sent out by the French Revolution. During the struggle 
of the two dominant classes, a spark touched off the "vast powder 
magazine upon which they both rested. One August night in the 
year 1791 the whole plain of the north was swept with fire and 
drenched with blood. Five hundred thousand negro slaves in 
the depths of barbarism revolted, and the horrors of the massacre 
made Europe and America shudder." 

Three years of convulsions followed and the French National 
Assembly proclaimed the freedom of the slaves. The French Revo- 
lution brought forth its Napoleon Bonaparte; the Haytian Revo- 
lution brought forth a scarcely less remarkable figure, the most 
distinguished negro of all history, Toussaint L'Ouverture. The 
burning eloquence of Wendell Phillips so exaggerated the virtues 
of this hero that the rugged outlines of his character have gen- 
erally been obscured in a halo of glittering eulogy. Toussaint 
was a full black, the grandson of a native chief on the coast of 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 57 

Africa. He was born in 1746, making him forty-five years old 
at the opening of the negro insurrection. He was a man of great 
sobriety, indefatigable energy, and an audacity and cunning equal 
to that of Napoleon. In ordinary affairs he was gentle and 
straightforward, but when aroused vehement, treacherous, and 
even ferocious. His morbid ambition, his indifference to means 
in gratifying his lust for power, his reckless personal courage, 
his fatalism, led Mr. Adams to draw a striking parallel between 
his character and career and that of Bonaparte. He was indeed 
the Napoleon of St. Domingo, and was hated by the greater 
Napoleon with a fervor not uncommon between strikingly similar 
characters whose aims conflict. 

Toussaint in the early period of the war fought on the side 
of the Royalist Creoles under Spanish pay, but when the Republic 
proclaimed the freedom of the slaves in 1794 he transferred his 
allegiance and took over his army of 4,000 men with which he 
executed the sudden blow that drove the Spaniards out of the 
island. A year later he was made brigadier-general in the ser- 
vice of the republic and within two years more was general-in- 
chief, with military command over the whole colony. In this 
position he was practically dictator and began paving the way for 
a crown. When France and the United States were on the brink 
of war in 1798, Toussaint did not hesitate to favor the United 
States. Amicable trade relations were established and American 
seamen ran a thriving business with the island. In this way, 
Toussaint became independent of French supplies and Edward 
Stevens, the able American Consul, wrote home that the negro 
chieftain was only waiting for a more auspicious time to publish 
a declaration of independence. The French Consul was ban- 
ished, and in May, 1801, Toussaint executed his Napoleonic 
coup d'etat by assuming the dictatorship for life, with power to 
appoint his successor. 

The problem in hand is now fully stated. Napoleon has set 
his heart on the occupation of Louisiana, and has made peace in 
Europe in order to free his hand for the work. The treaty of 



58 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

retrocession is fixed. Preparations are being rapidly pushed to 
fit out the fleet and army for the expedition. Across the Atlantic 
is the young republic, weak in preparation, slow to anger, but de- 
termined in policy. In the presidential chair sits Thomas 
Jefferson, peaceful, adroit, concealing baiiieath his slouchy posture 
an unending flow of conversation, his sunny smile and suave 
manners, a political cunning never surpassed. Anxious for peace 
himself, his finger is on the pulse of the nation and every throb 
of its heart is carefully measured. At the threshold of the 
United States is the island of St. Domingo, the only center from 
which a French colonial system in America can be built up, and 
which Bonaparte must control before he can safelj'^ occupy 
Louisiana. It is now under the dictatorship of Toussaint 
L'Ouverture, with 20,000 disciplined troops, able, ambitious, de- 
fiant. The First Consul must act, act quickly and powerfully; 
yet sleepless energy was the basic principle of his greatness and 
the lethargy which sometimes hindered his later enterprises was 
now wholly absent. 

During the month of October, 1801, the French and 
Spanish ports where the combined fleet was being prepared, saw 
immense activity. A large armj* was to accompany the fleet 
and General Leclerc, Napoleon's brother-in-law and ablest sub- 
ordinate, was put in charge. The "Napoleon of the Antilles" 
was to be crushed, slavery restored at Guadaloupe and St. Do- 
mingo and the island used as a stepping stone to things higher. 
To this end Napoleon did not hesitate to use a bit of the meanest 
diplomacy that ever blackened the annals of mankind. Leclerc 
was given a proclamation which he was to publish to the blacks. 
"If you are told," it said, "that these forces are destined to 
ravish your liberty, answer: The Republic has given us liberty, 
the Republic will not suff"er it to be taken from us!" In order 
to disarm Toussaint with flattery he wrote: "We have conceived 
esteem for j^ou and we take pleasure in recognizing you and 
proclaiming the great services you have rendered the French 
people. If the French flag floats over St. Domingo, it is to 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 59 

vou and the brave blacks that they owe it. Assist the captain- 
general with your counsels, your influence, and your talents. 
'WTiat can you desire? — the liberty of the blacks? You know 
that in all the countries where we have been, we have given it 
to the peoples who had it not." Further assurance was given 
in his message to the French Legislature. "At St. Domingo 
and Guadaloupe there are no more slaves. All is free there; 
all will there remain free." But to Leclerc his instructions were 
far different. "The moment you have rid yourself of Toussaint, 
Christophe, Dessalines, and the principal brigands, and the 
masses of the blacks shall be disarmed, send over to the continent 
all the blacks and mulattoes who have played a role in the civil 
troubles. Rid us of these gilded Africans, and we shall have 
nothing more to wish." Later he wrote: "As regards the return 
of the blacks to the old regime, — use the utmost caution. For 
some time yet vigilance, order, a discipline at once rural and 
military, must take the place of positive and pronounced slavery." 
Napoleon's policy of combining force and lying diplomacy 
was for the time being all too successful. Leclerc, with his 
large fleet and superb army of ten thousand men, arrived at St. 
Domingo in January, 1802. A desolating war of three months 
duration followed. The magnificent French cavalcade melted 
before the attacks of the ferocious guerilla chieftains and ab- 
ject failure stared Leclerc in the face. But treachery appeared 
in the forces of the blacks and Toussaint's ablest lieutenant, 
Christophe, surrendered his posts to the French. Betrayed by 
his friends, Toussaint, in an evil moment, decided to trust the 
word of Bonaparte and on May 1, 1802, put himself in the 
hands of Leclerc. It was his fatal misstep and sealed his doom. 
On June 10 he was arrested, hurried on board ship, and sent 
to Brest. From there he disappeared. The few who knew the 
secret kept silent through shame. He was sent to a dungeon 
high in the Jura Mountains, where his tropical nature suc- 
cumbed to the cold and dampness and solitude of a single win- 
ter. For refinement of cruelty and treachery this was even 
Napoleon's masterpiece. 



60 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

The betrayal of the leaders, however, did not give Leclerc 
possession of the island. It only led to premature action and 
the ruin of Napoleon's cause. Within four days of the arrest 
of Toussaint orders were given for the restoration of slavery 
in Guadaloupe. When news of this order was spread among 
the blacks of St. Domingo, their fanaticism became frenzy. 
"They laugh at death" wrote General Leclerc. The first 
French army of seventeen thousand men was destroyed in fight- 
ing the blacks. A second was swept away by yellow fever. Be- 
fore Leclerc had been in St. Domingo nine months he wrote to 
his chief that of twenty-eight thousand three hundred men sent 
to St. Domingo, only four thousand remained fit for service. 
'Add to our losses that of five thousand sailors, and the occupa- 
tion of St. Domingo has cost us till now twenty-four thousand 
men, and we are not yet definitely masters of it. In order to be 
master of St. Domingo, you must send me twelve thousand men 
without losing a single day." In addition he demanded twelve 
hundred thousand dollars in specie and five thousand more men 
for the summer campaign, without all of which said he, the 
colony "will be forever lost to France." In less than two 
months more Leclerc himself followed his army to the grave and 
Napoleon's plan had failed. Toussaint L'Ouverture, the fren- 
zied ex-slaves, and the tropical fevers of St. Domingo had drained 
the First Consul's treasury, buried his armies, and saved Louis- 
iana. 

Meanwhile the United States had become thoroughly 
aroused. When Toussaint and the other black leaders had been 
seized. Napoleon, thinking the conquest ended, ordered that the 
expedition which was to occupy Louisiana be immediately fitted 
out. "My intention is," said he, "to take possession of Louisiana 
with the shortest delay, and that this expedition be made in the 
utmost secrecy, under the appearance of being directed on St. 
Domingo." We have seen this expedition sink into the yawning 
abyss on the island which was to be only its pretended destination. 
The secret of its intent, however, was soon out. Before Living- 



A Diplomatic Dreima: the Great Purchase. 6l 

ston had been in Paris a second month he wrote: "I know that the 
armament, destined in the first instance for Hispaniola, is to pro- 
ceed to Louisiana provided Toussaint makes no opposition." By 
the spring of 1802 the designs of France became well known in 
the United States. Livingston was coldly received and soon ig- 
nored; American agents and merchants were maltreated in St. 
Domingo ; the pacific Madison became irritable and Jefferson, the 
friend of France, became pugnacious. The President had in- 
structed Livingston in September, 1801, to suggest to France that 
she secure the cession of West Florida to the United States, which 
"would contribute to reconcile" us to the French occupation of 
New Orleans; but his attitude was now changed. Dupont de 
Nemours was a French gentleman of influence who was at the 
time on a visit to the United States. Being on excellent terms 
with Dupont, Jefferson decided to send through him an unoflScial 
message to Bonaparte. This method of communication was for- 
cible by reason of the fact that Jefferson was known to be a 
friend of France and he could thus analyze the situation more 
coldly. He enclosed to Dupont a letter to Livingston which he 
desired him to read and then seal. In regard to the cession of 
Louisiana to France Jefferson wrote to Dupont: "The cession of 
New Orleans and the Floridas to us would be a palliation, yet I 
believe it would be no more, and that this measure will cost 
France, and perhaps not very long hence, a war which will anni- 
hilate her on the ocean, and place that element under the despot- 
ism of two nations — which I am not reconciled to the more be- 
cause my own would be one of them." The enclosure to Liv- 
ingston which Dupont was to read and report to Napoleon was 
couched in still stronger terms. 

"The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes 
the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water 
mark. It seals the union of two nations, who in conjunction can 
maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment 
we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." 

This was no flourish of the "mailed fist" or blustering threat 



62 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

of immediate war ; it was simply an acute and forcible statement 
of facts which would readily appeal to statesmen. Talleyrand 
and Napoleon knew how narrowly a war had been averted only 
three years before and that the Federalists were still actively hos- 
tile to France. Moreover the south and west which had furnished 
the majority that had elected Jefferson were ready at any time 
to fight for Louisiana. For Jefferson to desert the south and 
west would have been political suicide and this Jefferson was the 
last man to commit. His language and attitude have been misin- 
terpreted by Mr. Henry Adams, whose ideas of Jefferson coin- 
cide too nearly with those of his bellicose grandfather who had, 
with such bad grace surrendered the executive mansion to Jeffer- 
son, and whose opinion has been too generally accepted by later 
historians. 

Jefferson's keen message of warning to France was followed 
by an event which complicated the situation and forced his hand. 
That event was the suspension of the right of deposit at New 
Orleans by the Spanish intendant, Don Juan Ventura Morales. 
The treaty of 1795 had stipulated that if the right of deposit at 
New Orleans was denied after three years another entrepot should 
be provided. This Morales refused to grant and every one recog- 
nized his action as a result of the retrocession. Tennessee and 
Kentucky clamored loudly for war. The Federalists echoed the 
cry and, in those days of violent partisanship, rejoiced at Jef- 
ferson's dilemma. He must now adopt their policy and declare 
war or lose his western supporters. All watched eagerly for the 
result. 

Jefferson's political insight never met a severer test and his 
astute party manipulation never won a greater success. Congress 
met and waited for the President to declare himself; but in his 
message he made no allusion to the closure of the Mississippi. Re- 
garding the matter uppermost in everyone's mind he simply said: 
"The cession of the Spanish province of Louisiana to France, 
which took place in the course of the late war, will, if carried into 
effect, make a change in the aspect of our foreign relations which 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 65 

will doubtless have a just weight in any deliberations of the Leg- 
islature connected with the subject." The war party was ig- 
nored. Jefferson had no mind to be forced into war nor to lose 
his western adherents. Beneath a nonchalant appearance of in- 
difference he concealed the utmost diplomatic activity. Yrujo, 
the minister of Spain, was urged to protest against the action of 
the Spanish intendant's closure of the Mississippi. Yrujo wrote 
"a veritable diatribe" to Morales and succeeded in getting a re- 
nunciation of his action by the Spanish governor, Salcedo, and 
later a restoration of the right of deposit by the Spanish govern- 
ment. The French charge, Pichon, was deluged with as wily a 
series of threats as were ever concocted. Gallatin, Madison, and 
Jefferson all tried their hands. Pichon was thoroughly fright- 
ened, and sent home repeated cries of distress. "It is impossi- 
ble," said he, "to be more bitter than this government is at the 
present posture of affairs and at the humiliating attitude in which 
our silence about Louisiana places them. Mr. Jefferson Avill be 
forced to yield to necessity his pretensions and scruples against 
a British alliance. I noticed at his table that he redoubled his 
civilities and attentions to the British charge. I should also say 
that he treats me with much consideration and politeness, in spite 
of the actual state of affairs." To the British minister the Pres- 
ident reiterated "with additional force the resolution of the coun- 
try never to abandon the claim of the free navigation" of the 
Mississippi, and declared that if "they should be obliged" to draw 
the sword "they would throw away the scabbard." 

All this feminine but surprisingly successful finesse was pri- 
vate and secret; Congress and the West demanded something pub- 
lic, something open and tangible. The administration therefore 
decided to ask for the appropriation of two million dollars to de- 
fray the expenses of negotiation and send a minister extraordi- 
nary to support Livingston in buying New Orleans and the Flor- 
idas. James Monroe, who was specially popular in the south- 
west, was nominated for this mission. To Monroe, Jefferson 
wrote: "If we cannot, by a purchase of the country, insure to 



64 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

ourselves a course of perpetual peace and friendship with all 
nations, then, as war cannot be distant, it behooves us immediately 
to be preparing for that course, without, however, hastening it; 
and it may be necessary, on your failure on the Continent, to 
cross the Channel." When Monroe arrived in Washington the 
efforts of the administration were redoubled. Madison had sent 
for Pichon and put before him every argument the United States 
had to offer and later refused to transact business on the ground 
that Talleyrand was not recognizing Livingston. The action of 
the States of New York, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania 
in declaring for hostilities was unostentatiously paraded in diplo- 
matic circules; Gallatin talked of war; General Smith, the ad- 
ministration leader of Congress, at a public dinner to Monroe of- 
fered the toast, "Peace, if peace is honorable ; war, if war is nec- 
essary!" Before starting Monroe had a shrewd and inflamma- 
tory talk with Pichon concerning which the charge wrote: "He 
did not conceal from me that if his negotiation failed, the admin- 
istration had made up its mind to act with the utmost vigor, and 
to receive the overtures which England was incessantly making." 
Jefferson wrote to Dupont de Nemours: "Our circumstances are 
so imperious as to admit of no delay as to our course, and the 
use of the Mississippi so indispensable that we can not hesitate 
one moment to hazard our existence for its maintenance. If we 
fail in this effort to put it beyond the reach of accident, we see 
the destinies we have to run, and prepare at once for them." 

All this excited talk had been prepared for by Jefferson's 
unoflicial message through Dupont to Bonaparte; much of it was 
for political effect and part of it was insincere. Jefferson did 
not mean to have war. Peace was his passion and in the pur- 
suit of it he was "steady as the magnet itself." He had not hes- 
itated to declare war on the Barbary pirates but he did not want 
to become entangled in European affairs. His war talk was sim- 
ply a shield for his diplomacy in which he had a sublime confi- 
dence which would have been ridiculous had it not been justified 
by the result. Monroe was sent to France with instructions to 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 65 

join Livingston in offering any sum within ten million dollars for 
New Orleans and West Florida. 

Meanwhile the time gained by Jefferson in allaying the war 
excitement in Congress and the West had wrought profound 
changes in Europe. The King of Spain, under the domination 
of the imperious Godoy, had held back the actual transfer of his 
American colony. The First Consul fretted and fumed but 
Godoy was tenacious. Gouvion St. Cyr was sent over to the 
Spanish court but not until October 15, 1802, did his bluster ob- 
tain the final signature of Charles IV., and then under the most 
exacting and definite conditions. Spain demanded, first, that the 
new kingdom of Etruria should be recognized by England, Aus- 
tria, and the Duke of Tuscany, who had been dethroned to make 
room for Parma; second, that France should give a written pledge 
that she would never alienate Louisiana and that she would re- 
store it to Spain in case the King of Etruria should lose his power. 
Both these things St. Cyr pledged in the name of the First Con- 
sul. Before anything definite could now be done, however. Na- 
poleon was fast caught in the toils of European politics. 

"What Bonaparte," says Mr. Schouler, "regarded as indis' 
pensable in military science, Jefferson had applied to politics — • 
an accurate calculation of all contingencies in the first place and 
then giving to accident its due allowance. The accident for 
which Jefferson had allowed was, in truth, the speedy renewal of 
hostilities between France and England." This expectation was 
to be realized sooner than he had hoped. Early in February, 
1803, came warnings that the peace of Amiens was to be broken. 
France charged England with perfidy in not surrendering Malta; 
England preferred counter charges of bad faith against Napo- 
leon; war was in the air. The tense situation was ended on 
March 12th, when at a reception in the drawing room of Jose- 
phine, the First Consul abruptly confronted the British ambassa- 
dor. Lord Whitworth, before the assembled ambassadors of Eu- 
rope, with the remark: "I find your nation wants war again." 

5 



66 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

"You have just finished a war of fifteen years. You want an- 
other war of fifteen years." "I must either have Malta or war !" 
In England preparations for the inevitable conflict already busied 
the ministry and enlivened the nation. Two months before Na' 
poleon's mind had been made up. He was tired of peace. The 
fifty thousand men and vast amounts of money he had sunk in St. 
Domingo without any effect except to make the island worthless 
for a generation^ aroused infinite disgust in his impatient soul. 
The news of the death of Leclerc which reached him in the first 
week of January, 1803, was the last straw. Yet he kept his own 
councils for two months. The orders for the assembling of the 
thirty-five thousand men for which General Rochambeau in St. 
Domingo had called were allowed to stand. Napoleon was no 
stranger to defeat and could abandon his dearest enterprise with 
equanimity when pursuit became hopeless ; but abandonment of 
St. Domingo would be a public confession of failure for which 
he was not ready until he could create a diversion in Europe. 
Early in April he was ready for the startling announcement. He 
had made up his mind to part with Louisiana ; and while JNIonroe 
was hastening to the French coast his plan was announced to 
Talleyrand. The building up of the French colonial empire in 
America had been Talleyrand's highest ambition and he opposed 
the renunciation. But Napoleon was not to be balked by a sub- 
ordinate. On April 10, 1803, he summoned two of his ministers, 
of whom his Finance Minister, Barbe Marbois, was one, and an- 
nounced that he feared that England would seize Louisiana. 
"The conquest of Louisiana," said he, "will be easj?^ if they will 
only descend upon it. I have not a moment to lose in putting it 
out of their power. . . . If I were in their place, I certainly 
would not have waited. ... I contemplate turning it over 
to the United States. I should hardly be able to say that I cede 
it to them, for we are not yet in possession of it. But even a 
short delay may leave me nothing but a vain title to transmit to 
these republicans, whose friendship I seek. They are asking me 
for but a single city of Louisiana, but I already regard the whole 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 67 

colony as lost, and it seems to me that in the hands of this rising 
power it will be more useful to the policy and even to the com- 
merce of France than if I should attempt to keep it." The next 
day he summoned Barbe Marbois and delivered to him one of his 
short, sententious orations of command: 

"Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season; I re- 
nounce Louisiana. It is not New Orleans that I cede; it is the 
whole colony, without reserve. I know the price of what I aban- 
don. I have proved the importance I attach to this province, 
since my first diplomatic act with Spain had the object of recov- 
ering it. I renounce it with the greatest regret; to attempt ob- 
stinately to retain it would be folly. I direct you to negotiate 
the affair. Have an interview this very day with Mr. Living- 
ston." 

Talleyrand, however, had seen the determination of Bona- 
parte and determined to keep a hand in the negotiations. For 
months Livingston had applied himself with a sublime pertinacity 
to the end to which Napoleon was now advancing. He had plied 
Talleyrand with arguments and memorials. Finding him obdu- 
rate and supercilious he had directed his efforts toward the First 
Consul himself to whom he presented a memorial which Joseph 
Bonaparte assured him the First Consul had read and considered 
with care. So meager had been his success that the only encour- 
agement he could send Jefferson was the disconsolate note: "Do 
not absolutely despair." But within a few hours of the above 
orders to Marbois imagine his surprise when the imperturbed 
Talleyrand asked him what the United States would give for the 
whole of Louisiana ! Livingston was disconcerted, and to gain 
time for reflection, stated that the aims of the United States 
extended only to New Orleans and the Floridas and announced 
that Monroe was speedily expected with fuller instructions. 
]\Ionroe arrived in Paris tlie next day, April 12, but Livingston, 
recovered from his surprise, hung about Talleyrand all the fore- 
noon hoping to reap alone the fruit of his assiduous labors. The 
next afternoon the French ministers were entertained by Living- 



68 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

ston in order that Monroe might be introduced. Livingston con- 
fided to Barbe Marbois, Talleyrand's "extraordinary conduct" 
and after the party had broken up went home with him and those 
two men, in a midnight conversation, practically sealed the bar- 
gain. Bonaparte had mentioned fifty million francs as the price 
to be demanded; but Marbois set the price at one hundred million 
francs, leaving the American government to pay to their own 
citizens the spoliation claims demanded from France. The Amer- 
ican claims amounted to twenty-five millions— making the price 
one hundred and twenty-five million francs or twenty-five million 
dollars for the whole western bank of the Mississippi, extending 
from New Orleans to the Lake of the Woods, and indefinitely 
westward. This was not an exorbitant price, but Livingston had 
the efi"rontery to offer twenty million francs or about four million 
dollars, professing not to want the western bank, but only New 
Orleans and the Floridas. Livingston, overjoyed at the pros- 
pect, went home and sat up until three o'clock to write Jefferson 
of the opening of the negotiations without Monroe's help. "We 
shall do all we can," he wrote, "to cheapen the purchase; but my 
present sentiment is that we shall buy." 

Livingston was right. Two weeks of dangerous haggling 
over the price followed during which a violent quarrel took place 
in the Bonaparte family over the intended transfer. Both Lucian 
and Joseph Bonaparte vigorously opposed the sale of Louisiana 
and the picturesque scenes between the three brothers are por- 
trayed in dramatic chapters in Hosmer's "History of the Louis- 
iana Purchase." On April 29 the price was agreed upon at sixty 
million francs in money plus twenty million francs in spoliation 
claims to be assumed by the American government — in all eighty 
million francs, or fifteen million dollars. The treaty of cession 
was dated April 30, 1803, and closed the negotiations. 

The purchase of Louisiana was the grandest diplomatic 
achievement in American history. When Livingston signed his 
name to the treaty, he arose excitedly and shook hands with Mar- 
bois and Monroe. "We have lived long," he exclaimed, "but this 



A Diplomatic Drama: the Great Purchase. 69 

is the noblest work of our lives." And indeed it was, though 
Livingston had signed the Declaration of Independence a(nd Mon- 
roe was to be, next to Washington, the most popular President of 
the United States. Monroe deserved little credit for the negotia- 
tions and claimed little; it was a triumph for Livingston, backed 
by the administration at Washington. If Livingston is not our 
greatest diplomat he was, at least, the most fortunate; for next 
to the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Con- 
stitution, the annexation of Louisiana was the most important 
event in American history. It opened the portals of the United 
States to an illustrious career beyond the Mississippi. Hitherto 
our national ambition had halted at the Father of Waters and our 
government had trembled at the prospect of this outlet to our 
western commerce being closed at the nod of a foreign potentate. 
A storm of western wrath, a few sly presidential innuendoes, a 
holocaust of barbarian frenzy and tropical pestilence, a tenacious 
diplomatic siege, a rumble of European war, and a few strokes 
of the destiny-laden pen changed all. The barrier to our west- 
ward expansion vanished like a dream; a vast, seemingly illim- 
itable empire stretched away toward the setting sun. The United 
States was now assured of a dominating influence on the Amer- 
ican continent; the danger of undesirable neighbors pointing can- 
non at our western frontier was forever removed, and the advanc- 
ing tide of our civilization could only be checked on the shores 
of the broad Pacific. This was the conquest of peace and of 
peaceful methods; the annals of war present few greater tri- 
umphs and no results of greater significance to the nations in- 
volved. 



CHAPTER V. 

LOUISIANA TERRITORY UNDER THE UNITED STATES. 

THE news of the purchase of Louisiana arrived in America 
the latter part of June, 1803. Its importance was im- 
mediately felt and the consequences of the purchase be- 
came the all-absorbing topic of the day. At bottom 
the whole country was filled with serene joy; but on the surface 
ripples of discontent foreboded the lashing waves of partisan 
conflict soon to roughen the political sea. The Republicans were 
pleased but perplexed. The loyalty of the southwest had been 
retained; they had lowered the taxes and at the same time paid 
off huge shares of the national debt; their policy had been pop- 
ular at home and their diplomacy had been brilliantly successful 
abroad; the Federalists had first been put on the defensive and 
then routed. They were therefore happy; but this feeling of 
content was clouded by the fact that new responsibilities were 
upon them. They had preached strict construction and a limited 
executive, put forth the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, and 
stormed at the monarchism of the Federalists ; and now Jefferson, 
democrat of democrats, the extreme advocate of State Rights, 
had assumed an authority exercised by no previous president and 
had arbitrarily bought a foreign empire to be incorporated into 
the territory of the United States. New constitutional problems 
had to be faced, the new territory to be governed, and the Re- 
publican supremacy to be maintained. 

Jefferson set about the new task with his usual energy and 
adroitness. He was too true to his political theories not to have 
constitutional scruples, and without delay drew up an amendment 
embodying his ideas of the proper way to dispose of the newly 
acquired territory without doing violence to the constitution. 

(70) 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 71 

This he submitted to the cabinet. The cabinet, however, were 
not so tenacious in upholding the theories they had advanced 
while in opposition and received the proposed amendment coldly. 
Jefferson then appealed to party leaders outside the cabinet. Hih 
proposition met with so little encouragement that he drew up an- 
other amendment which he hoped would meet with greater ap- 
proval; but before it could be thoroughly canvassed, circum- 
stances intervened to force his hand. Rumors were spread 
abroad that Napoleon was about to change his mind. Living- 
ston's letters became alarming and the Spanish minister Yrujo, 
who had been such a friend to the administration at Washington, 
sent to Madison protest after protest against the sale of Louis- 
iana. He quoted the engagement entered into by St. Cyr which 
bound Napoleon not to alienate the province and declared that 
since France had not carried out the conditions of her contract 
for Louisiana, she could not rightfully dispose of it as her own. 
It was necessary then to act quickly and to present a united front 
to the enemy. Spain was, in fact, still in possession and who 
linew what attitude Napoleon would take in the end. 

Such considerations led Jefferson to defer to the wishes of 
his party and to trust the future to right the constitutional error. 
In the presence of a threatened war with Spain a mistake would 
be serious and he decided that Congress should share the respon- 
sibility with the president. A special session was called to meet 
October 17, 1803. In his message to this Congress, Jefferson 
said not a word about his proposed amendment or the unconsti- 
tutionality of the purchase. He had decided that the all-impor- 
tant thing was to get possession of Louisiana and declared that 
"with the wisdom of Congress it will rest to take those ulterior 
measures which may be necessary for the immediate occupation 
and temporary government of the country, for its incorporation 
into our Union, for rendering the change of government a bless- 
ing to our newly adopted brethren, for securing to them the 
rights of conscience and of property, for confirming to the In- 
dian inhabitants their occupancy and self-government." 



72 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

The treaty signed by Livingston and Monroe for the pur- 
chase of Louisiana consisted of three parts, the treaty of cession 
and two conventions. The first stipulated that France should 
turn over to the United States the province as obtained from 
Spain by the treaty of San Ildefonso; that the inhabitants were 
to be, as soon as possible, incorporated into the Union as citizens ; 
that in the meantime they should be protected in their liberty, 
property and religion; and that for twelve years French and 
Spanish ships should trade in Louisiana on the same basis as 
American ships. The second part stipulated that the eleven 
million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was to bear six 
per cent interest for fifteen j^ears and then to be paid in yearly 
installments of not less than three million dollars each. The third 
document related to the payment of the spoliation claims which 
were not to exceed three million seven hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. 

These documents were put before Congress and the results 
of the action of the political parties at this time are of two-fold 
constitutional importance. It marks the extent of the degrada- 
tion of the Federalists and sounds the death-knell of their party; 
and it begins an epoch of constitutional expansion by committing 
the Republicans to a liberal interpretation of the written Con- 
stitution. 

Regarding the first Mr. McMaster says: "Nothing so finely 
illustrates the low state to which the once prosperous Federalists 
were fallen as the turbulent and factious opposition they now 
made to the acquisition of Louisiana. But a remnant of the 
great party remained. Tens of thousands of independent 
thinkers, to whom good government was better than political 
strife . . . now gave a warm support to the Republican 
cause. . . . They had seen promised reforms become actual 
reforms. They had seen the Federalists add eight millions to 
the public debt in five years. Thej'^ had seen the Republicans 
reduce the debt by five millions in two years. They had seen 
the Federalists go to the very limit of constitutional taxation in 
the laying of a direct tax. They had seen the Republicans dry 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 7S 

every source of internal revenue and still have money to spare. 
Never had the government been so smoothly, so savingly, carried 
on." By way of contrast to these independents he continues: 
"To the narrow partisans who remained in the Federal ranks the 
good which Jefferson accomplished went for nothing. 
They received the news of the best and wisest act of Jefferson's 
whole administration with a roar of execration they ought to have 
been ashamed to send up. Some were worried lest the East 
should become depopulated. Some feared the mere extent of ter- 
ritory would rend the Republic apart. Some affected the 
language of patriots and lamented the enormous increase the 
purchase would make in the national debt. . . . Soon 
Federal writers and printers all over the land were vicing 
with each other in attempts to show the people what an exceed- 
ingly great sum of money fifteen millions of dollars was. Weigh 
it, and there will be four hundred and thirty-three tons of solid 
silver. Load it in wagons and there will be eight hundred and 
sixty-six of them. Stack it up dollar upon dollar, and the pile 
will be more than three miles high. It would load twenty-five 
sloops; it would pay an army of twenty-five thousand men forty 
shillings a week each for twenty-five years; it would, divided 
among the population of the country, give three dollars for each 
man, woman, and child. All the gold and all the silver coin in 
the Union would, if collected, fall vastly short of such a sum. 
We must for fifteen years to come pay two thousand four hun- 
dred and sixty-five dollars interest each day. . . . For whose 
interest is this purchase made ? The South and West. Will they 
pay a share of the debt? No, for the tax on whiskey has been 
removed." 

Such was the attitude of Federalist agitators; but happily 
their rantings were of no avail. The mass of the people consid- 
ered the purchase a bargain and the Senate ratified the treaty 
on the second day of the session by a vote of twenty-four to 
seven. Napoleon's ratification was already in the hands of the 
French charge and on October 21, ratifications were exchanged 
and Louisiana was ours. 



74 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

The President had now done his part, and it became the duty 
of Congress to provide for the immediate occupation and tem- 
porary government of the new territory. Congress acted 
promptly, and a bill with that end in view was introduced into 
the House. 

The discussion of this bill brought forth one of those pe- 
culiar paradoxes that occasionally appear in political life. The 
Republicans who had so strenuously objected to the Presidential 
prerogative and loose construction in 1798, now advocated the 
widest extension of the treaty-making power and the placing of 
autocratic authority over the new territory in the hands of the 
President. The New England Federalists, led by the Griswolds 
and Timothy Pickering, took the extremest ground in favor of 
strict construction and state rights. The bill for a provisional 
government passed both houses by large majorities and became 
a law on October 31. The victory of the Republicans left the 
Federalists and New England full of discontent and nearly 
ready for secession; but the victory had been at the ex- 
pense of their old Republican theory of constitutional interpre- 
tation. The Constitution had become enlarged, elastic, adapt- 
able, and henceforth was to be interpreted according to the spirit 
and not the letter. The Federalist idea of nationality had gained 
ground while Republican common sense had triumphed over her 
earlier theoretical pedantry and ushered in a new era of wiser 
and broader constitutional development. 

No sooner was the purchase of Louisiana complete than 
people began to inquire what this new province was — what were 
its boundaries, its extent, its nature, and its value. As a matter 
of fact no one knew. Not a boundary was fixed. Its north- 
eastern limit was muflPled in the ignorance that hid the source of 
the Mississippi; its southeastern boundary was concealed in the 
sinuous diplomacy that enveloped the mouth of that river. The 
southern boundary was the Gulf of Mexico but just how much 
of the coast was included no one could say. The Western limit 
sank away into the unknown prairies toward the Pacific while 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 75 

its northward projection remained to be outlined by a convention 
with England. When Barbe Marbois had been pressed to make 
definite boundaries, he had gone to Napoleon only to be told that 
if an obscurity did not exist it would be well to make one. 

The first difl5culty arose with Spain over the boundary be- 
tween Louisiana and the Floridas. Livingston and Monroe 
claimed the purchase included West Florida, as far east as the 
river Perdido, and had been encouraged by Napoleon in this 
claim. But Spain obstinately refused to admit the claim to any 
territory east of the Mississippi, and it remained to be settled by 
the purchase of Florida. The westward extension along the 
Gulf should have included part of Texas, but was finally fixed at 
the Sabine river; while the western boundary followed that river 
northward, thence along the 94th parallel of longitude to the 
Red river, followed that river to the 100th parallel, thence north 
to the Arkansas, trailed that river to the Rockies, thence along 
the crest of the mountains to the British border. The boundary 
line along the north was determined by a treaty with England in 
1818 fixing it along the 49th parallel from the Rockies to the 
Lake of the Woods. 

This vast extent of territory embraced nearly 900,000 square 
miles of the richest land the earth aflPords. Its area was greater 
than that of the whole thirteen original states or than Great 
Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy combined. 
Tales of its wonderful resources that fell far short of the truth 
were regarded as absurdly extravagant by the incredulous inhabi- 
tants along the Atlantic slope. Federalist cynicism was encour- 
aged by the report of the country sent in to Congress by Jeffer- 
son who collected the tales and traditions of hunters and trappers 
along the upper Mississippi and the Missouri, and transmitted 
them to Congress in a message. This wonderful message told of 
Indians of gigantic stature; tall bluffs faced with stone and 
carved by the hand of nature into a multitude of antique towers ; 
and reached a climax of myth in describing a huge mountain of 
pure rock-salt towering above the earth, one hundred and eighty 



76 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

miles long, and forty-five miles broad, all glittering white, with 
streams of saline water flowing in fissures down its barren slopes. 
The Federalists bubbled over with ridicule, but specimens of the 
salt were shown and bushels of it were reported on exhibition at 
St. Louis and Marietta. If such things were not true, others not 
less remarkable were, and an expedition sent out by Jefferson 
was already far away in the western wilds exploring the vast 
plains and tortuous defiles of the Rockies. 

It is now time to turn to New Orleans and see what was hap- 
pening at the capital of Louisiana during these months big with 
the fate of empire. When Napoleon had planned to seize Louis- 
iana, he had sent out Pierre Clement Laussat as civil agent to 
prepare the way for the arrival of General Victor with the mil- 
itary force and to co-operate with him in effecting the transfer. 
Laussat had arrived in New Orleans March 26, 1803, and 
promptly set about preparing the people for the French occupa- 
tion. He issued a proclamation filled with honied words, in which 
he stated the benevolent intentions of France, and wearily waited 
for the arrival of General Victor and his army. The French 
Creoles were filled with a delirium of joy at the prospect of res- 
tored French citizenship, and presented an address of congratu- 
lation to the "Citizen Prefect." But replying to his denuncia- 
tion of the Spanish regime, they declared: "We should be un- 
worthy of what is to us a source of much pride if we did not 
acknowledge that we have no cause of complaint against the 
Spanish Government. We have never groaned under the yoke 
of an oppressive despotism." In fact a majority of the people 
had become thoroughly reconciled to Spanish control. They had 
taken little part in the government, and desired little. Hence 
they looked upon a change of rulers with a surprising indiffer- 
ence and self-abnegation. 

On April 10, Marquis de Caso Calvo arrived from Havana 
to act as joint commissioner with Governor Salcedo in delivering 
the province to France. A proclamation was then issued by the 
Spanish authorities assuring to the inhabitants the protection and 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 77 

favor under French control which they had enjoyed under Spain. 
While these things were occupying the attention of the public 
about New Orleans, a rumor was spread abroad that France was 
about to transfer her title to the United States. Laussat en- 
deavored to silence this rumor, but it persisted. In the latter 
part of July he wrote to his government concerning it, but hardly 
was his letter started when he received a dispatch announcing his 
appointment as the commissioner of France to receive the prov- 
ince of Louisiana and deliver it to the United States. Following 
his instructions, a day was set for the first transfer. On No- 
vember 30, 1803, Calvo, Salcedo, and Laussat, accompanied by 
all thfe French and Spanish officers of the province, and a large 
retinue of clergy and leading citizens, assembled in the old Ca- 
bildo, a building that probably surpassed in picturesque and im- 
posing dignity any other civic structure in America at the time, 
and there went through the ceremonial of transferring the control 
of Louisiana from Spain to France. The subjects of his Cath- 
olic Majesty were absolved from their allegiance and turned over 
to the authority of the French republic, while the Spanish flag 
was lowered from the pole in front of the city hall, and the 
French tri-color hoisted to take its place. A temporary French 
government was organized, and on the same day Laussat pro- 
ceeded with his disagreeable task by announcing in a proclama- 
tion that the French control was only a preliminary step to its 
transfer to the commissioners of the United States who were soon 
to arrive. 

The commissioners appointed by Jefferson to receive the 
territory on the part of the United States were William C. C. 
Claiborne and Gen. James Wilkinson. The selection of these 
two men was one of expediency rather than wisdom since neither 
was particularly fitted for the position. In the face of a threat- 
ened war with Spain Jefferson was anxious to get possession at 
the earliest possible moment, and these men were in the neigh- 
borhood at the time. Claiborne was in his twenty-eighth year. 
He was descended from an old Virginia family, had long been in 



78 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

the government service, and had been a member of the Supreme 
Court of Tennessee, as well as a Congressman from that State 
while yet under the age limit of twenty-five years. In 1802 he 
was sent to govern the Mississippi Territory, and was from there 
transferred to the governorship of the new possession. He was 
a man of fair ability and agreeable personal qualities, but knew 
nothing of the French or Spanish language, or of the Spanish 
law which he was called upon arbitrarily to administer. Wilkin- 
son was a wayward, blustering, drunken, intriguing, yet able and 
shrewd general, who was selected because he had control of the 
army in the West, which Jefferson made ready to use if the Span- 
iards should oppose the transfer with violence. A part of the 
militia of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee was ordered to be ready 
to march at a moment's warning and troops were collected at Ft. 
Adams and Natchez. 

December 20 was the day set for the final transfer. The 
Crescent City was to witness for the last time the ceremonial 
which had during the life time of some of the inhabitants, six 
times transferred their allegiance from one master to another. 
By nine o'clock of the appointed day the provincial militia began 
to gather on the Place d'Armes in front of the Cabildo. Just 
three weeks had passed since they had manoeuvered in the same 
place and saluted as the French tri-color mounted the flagstaff 
to replace the lowering Spanish ensign. It was the heart of 
their little city and the proud Creoles assembled with mingled 
sadness and curiosity. How soon, some conjectured, would the 
restless energy of the American destroy the sentiment, the gaiety, 
the idyllic ease and festive life, which they so much enjoyed? 

At noon the signal guns announced the approach of the 
Americans and a salute of twenty-four guns greeted the caval- 
cade at the gate of the city. At the head rode Wilkinson and 
Claiborne, followed by the dragoons in red uniform, the artillery, 
the infantry, and the French escort. The American troops drew 
up opposite the French and Spanish on the Place d'Arms and the 
ceremonies took place from the facing balcony of the Cabildo. 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 79 

Laussat opened the ceremonies from the chair of state. The 
treaty of cession was read in both English and French. Laussat 
read his credentials for alienating the Territory and Claiborne 
read Jefferson's command to receive it. Laussat then made the 
formal announcement of the alienation and presented the keys 
of the city to Claiborne, at the same time absolving the inhabi- 
tants of Louisiana from their oath of allegiance to the French 
republic. Claiborne then took the chair of state and congratu- 
lated the people that their political existence was no longer "open 
to the caprices of chance" and bade them welcome as citizens of 
the United States. He assured them that their liberty, their 
property and their religion were safe ; that their commerce would 
be favored, their agriculture encouraged and that they should 
never again be transferred. 

While these things were taking place men of no less than 
six nationalities crowded the vacant spaces below eager to witness 
the closing ceremony. For twenty days the symbol of French 
supremacy had fluttered from the top of its tall staff overlooking 
the city. It was with sinking hearts that the loyal Creoles now 
saw it slowly descend as the stars and stripes started upward. 
They met midway of the staff and were saluted. Then, flutter- 
tering in the breeze, the stars and stripes climbed to the top, 
amid the ringing cheers of the few Americans present, there to 
remain. The French flag descended, trembling to the ground 
never more to wave above the continent of North America. The 
dream of the high-souled Champlain as he braved death in the 
wilds of Canada; the hope that had sustained the chivalric La 
Salle when treachery and calamity hung like a pall over his 
soul; the gallantry of Montcalm whose blood helped to sanctify 
the Plains of Abraham; the iron resolution of Napoleon Bona- 
parte aided by fifty thousand martyred men in the island of St. 
Domingo; — all these came to naught and registered failure when 
the French flag touched the earth on that bright December day 
in 1803. 

The United States was now in possession ; the next thing nee- 



50 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

€ssary was to provide for the government of the new Territory. 
Congress had passed a law November 30, giving to the President 
full power to take possession of the purchased territory and 
govern it until a new act could be passed. Claiborne as governor, 
aided by Wilkinson, had in his control for the time being, the 
whole authority and responsibility of the government. The con- 
ditions were peculiar and the situation difficult and if Claiborne 
frequently erred in the exercise of his autocratic powers it was 
no more than others would have done. He was honest, sincere, 
and generous in his aims and succeeded in avoiding any serious 
<;omplication. 

In the succeeding March Congress passed an act for the or- 
ganization and government of the acquired territory for one year. 
So much of Louisiana as lay south of the 33rd parallel was cut 
off and named the Territory of Orleans. The remainder was to 
be called the District of Louisiana and was placed under the 
jurisdiction of the Governor and judges of the Indiana Territory. 
Orleans was organized into a separate province with a regular 
territorial government. The administrative authority was to be 
placed in the hands of a governor, a secretary, and a council of 
thirteen members, all appointed by the President. One superior 
<:ourt and such inferior courts as the council should see fit to 
create were to be established. Slave importation was limited to 
those brought* in by American immigrants, and jury trial was 
limited to criminal prosecutions and civil suits in which the sum 
involved was not less than one hundred dollars. This plan met 
severe opposition in Congress, on account of the lack of a share 
in the government by the governed, but was held to be necessary 
by reason of the heterogeneous character of the population, their 
disaffection to the transfer, and their lack of political training in 
self-government. They were to receive liberty only as they 
proved themselves worthy of it and be introduced gradually to the 
beneficent effects of free institutions. 

As the one year limit of the above government neared its end 
new acts were passed. An independent government was granted 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 81 

to the District of Louisiana which was now organized as the Ter- 
ritory of Louisiana, with a governor, a secretary and three judges 
of its own. Orleans was given a General Assembly of twenty- 
five delegates, to be elected by the people and was promised that 
when her free inhabitants numbered sixty thousand, she should 
be made a State and admitted into the Union. 

Turning now to the internal history of the purchase terri- 
tory, it may be observed that the international diplomatic struggle 
and the political ferment at Washington affected the inhabitants 
of Louisiana but little. They were used to a transfer of their 
allegiance and had become hardened to changes of government. 
Never having had a share in the management of affairs, a ma- 
jority of the people looked with indifference at the changes going 
on. The French and Spanish population hated the Americans, 
but at the same time envied their freedom and liberty and were 
partially reconciled to the supremacy of their government by the 
prospect of the inheritance of its blessings. Their attitude as 
well as that of many prominent foreigners may be gleaned from 
the dispatch of the French commissioner Laussat. "The Amer- 
icans," said he, "have given $15,000,000 for Louisiana; they 
would have given $50,000,000 rather than not possess it. . . . 
In a few years the country as far as the Rio Brazos will be in a 
state of cultivation. New Orleans will then have a population 
of from 30,000 to 50,000 souls, and the country will produce 
enough sugar to supply America and part of Europe. . . 
What a magnificent New France have we lost ! The people are 
naturally gentle though touchy, proud, and brave. They have 
seen themselves rejected for a second time from the bosom of 
their mother-country. . . . Their interpretation of the ces- 
sion, and their comments on it, show too clearly the extreme bit- 
terness of their discontent. Nevertheless, they have become tol- 
erably well disposed toward passing under the new government. 
There are advantages in the Constitution of the United 
States of which it will be impossible to prevent them from ex- 
periencing the benefit. And being once freed from colonial fet- 

6 



82 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

ters, it would be unnatural to suppose that Louisiana would ever 
willingly resume them." 

At the time of the transfer the population of the whole ter- 
ritory was about 50,000. Of these the French and Spanish Cre- 
oles (people of French and Spanish descent born in Louisiana) 
formed the aristocracy and the ruling caste. In smaller numbers 
were Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Irish, in- 
deed stragglers from many nations. Immigrants from Acadia, 
Germany, the Canaries, and the West Indies had formed settle- 
ments. A goodly proportion of the inhabitants were negroes, 
slaves and freedmen, while the mulattoes, quadroons, and octo- 
roons, played a part in Creole society not found elsewhere in the 
United States. Their strain of white blood raised them above 
the negroes and their strain of negro blood dragged them below 
the whites. Law and custom forbade social equality with the 
one, while pride and intelligence kept them from free admixture 
with the other. A peculiar set of regulations and customs grew 
up, galling but not altogether dishonorable, giving them a recog- 
nized place in the social scale. 

Under the Spanish regime the province was divided into 
upper and lower Louisiana — New Madrid at the southern ex- 
tremity of Missouri, being the dividing point. Below New Mad- 
rid were three-fourths of the population and seven-eighths of the 
wealth of the province. The most considerable j^l^ces were 
Point Coupe, Baton Rouge, Opelousas, Natchitoches, Tchoupi- 
toulas, and New Orleans. New Orleans was the capital and one 
of the most interesting cities in America. "Travelers," says Mc- 
Masters, "filled their letters with accounts of the wide, yellow, 
tortuous river rushing along for hundred of miles without a trib- 
utary of any kind ; of the levees that shut in the waters and kept 
their surface high above all the neighboring country; of the 
bayous where the alligators basked in the sunshine ; of the strange 
vegetation of the cypress swamps and the palmettos ; of the hang- 
ing moss, of the sloughs swarming with reptiles, of the pelicans, 
of the buzzards, of the herons, of the fiddler crabs, of houses 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 83 

without cellars, and of cemeteries where there was no such thing 
as a grave which had been dug." The town had been laid out 
with all the regularity of a military camp. The Place d'Armes 
formed the center of the city and was overlooked by the Cabildo 
and many aristocratic residences. The streets were narrow, un- 
paved, forming a pond of mud and water after each rainstorm, 
and were named after the dukes of France — Chartres, Orleans, 
Maine, Bourbon, Toulouse. The rude fortifications surmount- 
ing the city were composed of a rampart of earth, and a wooden 
palisade, skirted by a slimy ditch, surrounding the city. At each 
of the four corners was a huge bastion mounting some rusty can- 
non, with another to the rear of the city — all able to frown upon 
but scarcely to injure an intruder. 

The buildings which fronted the filthy streets were the ad- 
miration of all spectators. The architecture presented endless 
variety and color. Adobe structures with tiled roofs, brick 
houses adorned with yellow stucco, stone cathedrals, public build- 
ings crowned by the magnificent Cabildo, elegent residences with 
arcades and inner courts, open galleries and porte-cocheres, ver- 
andas, lattices, dormer windows, and gateways, transoms, and 
balconies of the finest wrought-iron work to be found in America. 
Social life centered in the coiFee-houses, billiard-rooms, dance 
halls, the theater, and the levee. At twilight the levee swarmed 
with people, walking about in the fresh evening breeze, sitting 
under the orange trees that lined the river bank, or joining in 
the dancing, drinking, and singing on the decks of the vessels 
moored to the wharf. The high-spirited young Creoles quarreled 
over their sweethearts, or their mistresses, or their games, and 
repaired at sunrise to The Oaks, which was the famous duelling- 
ground, where many a quarrel was composed at the ring of steel 
or the sight of blood, and many a life ruined by the conscious- 
ness of having killed a friend. The laws were cruel and irreg- 
ularly administered. Religion was not wanting but it did not 
take firm hold of the people. No finer church than the St. Louis 
cathedral existed on the continent. Education was neglected. 



84 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

The brilliant, facile, gay Creole led a life of semi-ease and luxury, 
indulged in a round of social pleasures and dissipations, and 
found little time to devote to the profounder problems of life. 

Agriculture and commerce formed the staple industries of 
the people. Plantations, cotton-fields, and sugar fields lined the 
river banks above New Orleans, while down its tortuous channel 
floated the broadhorns steered by the picturesque Mississippi 
river boatmen. The once sleepy levee now thronged with scores 
of river and ocean-going craft. The year before the transfer 
two hundred and sixty-five vessels sailed from the Mississippi, 
nearly two-thirds of them being American. The exports were 
valued at two millions of dollars while the imports reached half 
a million more. The exports were chiefly flour, salt beef and 
pork, tobacco, cotton, sugar, peltries, and lumber. 

To the Creole Upper Louisiana was a distant, rather hazy 
and indefinite settlement, far away on the barbarian frontier. 
They knew of it from the boatmen who steered their flat-bot- 
tomed craft to the river bank near the warehouses at New Or- 
leans and told weird tales of the vast continent to the northward. 
The principal villages of the upper country were New Madrid, 
Ste. Genevieve, New Bourbon, Cape Girardeau, St. Louis, and 
St. Charles, all hard by the banks of the Mississippi and the 
Missouri. Of this territory St. Louis, a thriving village of one 
thousand inhabitants, was the capital, where resided the lieuten- 
ant-governor in control of Upper Louisiana, and the other lead- 
ing officers of administration. The fur trade was the chief 
industry of the region, although lead mining and grain raising 
were likewise pursued. The settlers were rather primitive and 
unsophisticated but hardy, energetic, and adventurous. It was 
nearly three months after the transfer of New Orleans to the 
United States that a similar ceremony took place in St. Louis 
from the old government building near the corner of Main and 
Walnut streets. Not until March 10, 1804, did Captain Amos 
Stoddard receive the territory of Upper Louisiana in the name of 
the United States and unfurl the stars and stripes to wave above 
the Upper Mississippi. 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 85 

For some months Stoddard kept charge without making any 
serious changes in the official staff or the regulations of the former 
Spanish governor, Delassus. The people in general were apa- 
thetic regarding their rulers and did not seriously object to the 
transfer as did the loyal Creoles of Orleans. According to the 
Act of Congress of March 26, 1804, the District of Louisiana 
passed for one year under the jurisdiction of the Territory of 
Indiana, governed by General William Henry Harrison and his 
council of judges, whose headquarters were alternately at Vin- 
cennes, Cahokia, and Kaskaskia. In July 1805, the District was 
organized into Louisiana Territory, with an appointed governor, 
and a council of three judges. General James Wilkinson was 
chosen governor by President Jefferson and Frederic Bates sec- 
retary. Wilkinson was succeeded in 1807 by Captain Meri- 
wether Lewis who was in turn succeeded by General Benjamin 
Howard in 1809, 

During the early years following the transfer, two events 
of importance occurred in the purchased territory. The first 
was the unearthing of the notorious Aaron Burr conspiracy. 
Burr was a grandson of the saintly Jonathan Edwards and had 
been conspicuous from his early years for brilliance, audacity, 
cunning, and ambition. He had been read out of the Republican 
party for trying to beat Jefferson out of the presidency and had 
ruined his hopes of a legitimate political career by murdering 
Alexander Hamilton in a duel. While yet Vice-President of the 
United States and presiding over the Senate with a dignity and 
grace never surpassed, he harbored treason in his soul and formed 
a gigantic conspiracy, at once alluring and bold but impossible, 
and set about its accomplishment with a skill and hardihood 
worthy of a nobler cause. His designs were shadowy but his 
central aim was to use the adventurers along the frontier and 
the discontented in Louisiana to cut off as much of the West from 
the Union as appeared possible and with all the territory he 
could slice off the Spanish domain establish an empire where 
Aaron Burr would be supreme. From New York he brought a 



86 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

number of his Tammany friends and in the West Blennerhassett 
and Wilkinson lent their aid. Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and 
Governor Claiborne were unsuccessfully approached. But his 
tools were not perfectly selected. Wilkinson had been engaged 
in too many conspiracies on his own account to be caught in one 
where he was not chief and when failure threatened the expedi- 
tion he turned traitor to Burr. Contemptible and guilty as he 
was his energy and abilit}^ in putting down the conspiracy, aided 
as they were by his knowledge of Burr's plans, coupled with 
careful political manipulation, saved him from punishment. Burr 
was captured, tried, and set free, for want of convicting evidence ; 
but he remained ever afterward a political and social outcast. 

The other event of importance was the magnificent expedi- 
tion of Lewis and Clark. An expedition to the Pacific had been 
suggested by Jefferson fifteen years before and had been urged 
upon the American Philosophical Society with such force that a 
subscription was opened for such an enterprise in 1792. In 1801 
Captain Meriwether Lewis and a French botanist started out but 
the Frenchman was recalled and the enterprise abandoned. When 
in 1803 a good opportunity arose, Jefferson urged Congress to 
provide for the expedition which it did. Lewis was again se- 
lected and chose for his associate Captain William Clark, of the 
United States army. Lewis was a young Virginian of excellent 
family, possessed of a good education, sound intelligence, and a 
courage and tenacity of purpose which nothing could shake. He 
had seen military service under Anthony Wayne and was for 
three years President Jefferson's private secretary. His asso- 
ciate, William Clark, was a brother of George Rogers Clark, who 
had also served under W^ayne, and who was a trained frontiers- 
man of great ability and courage. He was thoroughly familiar 
with Indian nature and to his skill in dealing with them much of 
the credit of the expedition was due. It was an excellent com- 
bination for they seemed to lack no quality or accomplishment 
which could add to the success of such an exploration. 

They started up the JNIissouri with about twenty-five com- 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 87 

panions in the spring of 1804. They toiled painfully forward 
against the muddy and tempestuous current and were compelled 
to sjsend the first winter among the Mandan Indians in a fort 
near the present site of Bismarck. In the spring they continued 
their voyage into Montana^ left the headwaters of the ^Missouri, 
plunged into the wild canons of the Rockies, crossed the divide, 
and ferreted out the headwaters of the Snake river. Down this 
stream they floated into the Columbia, thence to its mouth wliere 
on November 15, 1805, they beheld "the waves like small moun- 
tains rolling out in the sea." They wintered on the Pacific and 
in the spring set out to retrace their journey and in September, 
1806 were again in St. Louis. 

This gigantic wilderness journey has scarce a parallel in the 
annals of history. For over two years had they wandered in an 
unknown world. Nearly eight thousand miles had they traveled, 
scarcely a league of which did not bristle with peril. They had 
gone without harm through the most dangerous Indian tribes 
showing a management of the savages which was a marvel of 
adroitness and humanity. They lost only one man by death and 
not one of their subordinates faltered. One Indian was shot by 
Captain Lewis when the lives of the party seemed to depend on 
a sudden show of vigor but as a whole the exj^edition forms the 
pleasantest and most creditable record in American frontier life. 
They opened a pathway of light through the great West and 
paved the way for the future settlement and control of the Ore- 
gon country. 

While Lewis and Clark were opening a pathway to the 
Upper Missouri and the distant Pacific an equally heroic spirit 
was gaining accurate knowledge of the sources of the Mississippi. 
General Zebulon M. Pike set out from St. Louis in August, 1805 
to explore ^Minnesota, and the region about the headwaters of 
the Mississippi. The next year he made another expedition from 
St. Louis, crossing Missouri, thence into the present Indian Ter- 
ritory, northward across Kansas into Nebraska and then south- 
west to the Rockies. Pushing up the Arkansas he gazed upon 



88 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

the lordly peak that bears his name and measured its height. 
From there he went southward in the dead of winter, suffering 
unspeakable agonies of hunger and cold, and finally reached the 
Rio Grande only to be captured by the Spaniards. He was re- 
leased after a short time and reached the American fort at 
Natchitoches in July, 1807. Through the journals of these ex- 
plorations added to the expedition of Lewis and Clark the Amer- 
ican public first realized what a glorious achievement the Louis- 
iana Purchase had been. 

As Laussat had predicted to his government the Territory 
of Orleans developed rapidly. A majority of the people were 
soon reconciled to the new government, although a number of 
the Spanish soldiers and leaders remained, intriguing and hoping 
for a retrocession until actually driven out. By 1810 there were 
twenty-five thousand people in New Orleans and the immediate 
vicinity and the population of the whole of Orleans amounted to 
more than seventy-five thousand. An enabling act was therefore 
passed by Congress to provide for erecting the Territory into a 
state. A convention was called which proclaimed a Constitution. 
The Territory then applied formally for admission into the 
Union under the name of Louisiana and was admitted on April 
30, 1812, being the ninth anniversary of the treaty of cession. 

Thus by the admission of the first state carved from that 
vast domain beyond the Mississippi the final disposition of the 
whole of it was determined. The remnant of the old Federalists 
had taken up the narrow constitutional view advanced by Jeffer- 
son when he first received the treaty of cession and denied the 
right of Congress to admit states except from the territory within 
the limits of the Union at the adoption of the Constitution. Af- 
ter dAvelling upon this constitutional objection Josiah Quincy in 
a speech before the House continued passionately: "To me it 
appears that this measure [for the admission of Louisiana] would 
justify a revolution in this country. I am compelled to declare 
it as my deliberate opinion that, if this bill passes, the bonds of 
this Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 89 

it are free from their moral obligations; and that, as it will be the 
light of all, so it wSll be the duty of some, to prepare definitely 
for a separation — amicably if they can, violently if they must." 
He was interrupted by cries of "Order! Order!" but was later al- 
lowed to continue his remarks in which he outlined the fears of 
New England and some other parts of the East that the scepter 
of power would soon slip from their grasp to be wielded by deni- 
zens of the wilds beyond the Alleghanies and even beyond the 
Mississippi. This violent outburst accomplished nothing as the 
precedent set by the passage of the bill was final. 

One more event and the new State must drop from our 
record. Scarcely two years had passed when a foreign foe was 
again at New Orleans. While Napoleon was languishing at Elba 
England determined to seize the territory he had sold to keep 
out of her power. For two years our feeble nation, rent with 
political selfishness and strife, had been waging a forlorn struggle 
with England, attended with astounding success on the sea and 
indifferent success on the northern frontier. When England for 
a time had her hands free she sent out a magnificent armament 
of twenty thousand veterans, perfectly equipped and well offi- 
cered. Sir Edward Pakenham had charge and the landing at the 
mouth of the Mississippi was effected in the latter part of 1814. 
The Louisiana Purchase was to become a British empire in spite 
of Napoleon and the young republic. 

But Andrew Jackson was in the way. With all his faults 
Jackson was the archtype of imperious energy and natural born 
leadership. Men obeyed him by instinct and trusted him by 
compulsion. Out of as heterogeneous a mob as general ever com- 
manded he wrought in a few short days an army that performed 
miracles. Behind hastily improvised breastworks of the rudest 
sort a droll confusion of men, arms, and equipment awaited the 
attack of 10,000 of Wellington's veterans. Behind the main line 
were only 3,200 men, — lank Tennessee and Kentucky frontiers- 
men, clad in brown homespun and armed with the long and deadly 
rifles with which they had been accustomed to pick squirrels out 



90 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

of the tallest trees ; Louisiana Creoles, in gay and varied uniforms, 
singing the INIarseillaise but loyal to the Union ; unwashed pirates 
from the swamps of Barataria; troops of negroes, sailors, mulat- 
toes, and a few regulars from the American army. Every move of 
Pakenham was checkmated by the decision and resourcefulness 
of Jackson and nothing apparently remained but to storm the in- 
trenchments. At the head of the advancing column Pakenham 
fell mortally wounded. The second in command soon followed. 
The lines wavered, fell back, were reformed and again charged 
into the rain of lead and death. Again they halted, sickened, 
gave way. One short hour ended the carnage and Lambert, the 
fourth in command, led off the broken columns, put them on board 
ship and since that day no foreign foe has encamped upon the 
free soil of the United States. Two thousand British soldiers 
had that day perished while within the American breastworks 
only six men were killed and seven wounded. Jackson had won 
the presidency and the West had exemplified its patriotism and 
military prowess. 

The State of Louisiana was soon followed into the Union by 
others. In 1812 the country north of Louisiana was organized 
as the Missouri Territory with a governor, apjDointed by the Presi- 
dent, a directly elected House of Representatives, and an indi- 
rectly elected council of nine members. The intrepid William 
Clark became governor and retained the office until Missouri was 
admitted as a State in 1821. The admission of Missouri caused 
the bitterest struggle of the era which ended in the famous Mis- 
souri Compromise. The new State contained the most favored 
portion of the territory, comprising within her borders the varied 
resources of a self-sustaining empire, and speedily took rank as 
one of the large States, steadily advancing until it reached fifth 
place in population and wealth. St. Louis soon outstripped her 
elder sister. New Orleans, and has remained the leading city west 
of the Mississippi. 

Missouri was followed in steady' succession by ten other 
States. The tide of emigration rolled steadily westward, wave 



Louisiana Territory Under the United States. 91 

upon wave, flooding the rich alluvial valleys, and gradually rising 
to the more sterile hilltops beyond. The Indians and the buffalo 
melted away and the wilderness crumbled before the onslaught 
of civilization. Arkansas was organized into a separate Terri- 
tory in 1819 and admitted into the Union as a State in 1836. 
Iowa Territory was organized in 1838 and admitted into the 
Union in 1845. Minnesota was made a, Territory in 1849 and 
erected into a State in 1858. The bitter Kansas-Nebraska strug- 
gle culminated in 1854 and Kansas became a State in 1861. Ne- 
braska followed in 1867. Colorado was erected into a Territory 
in 1861 and admitted to statehood 1876. Dakota Territory, or- 
ganized in 1861, was split into North and South Dakota and the 
two States admitted at the beginning of Harrison's administration 
in 1889- iNIontana, made a Territory in 1864, was admitted 
1889. Wyoming followed these States the next year. Thus 
twelve States have already been carved from the huge domain and 
it only remains for Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory 
to be united into the thirteenth. Each State will then represent 
only a little more than one million of the original fifteen million 
dollars purchase money. 

The riches of this stupendous acquisition are incalculable. 
It is now inhabited by fifteen million people (three times the 
population of the whole United States at the time of the pur- 
chase) and would support with ease twenty-five times its present 
number. It is "the granary of the world, the inexhaustible store- 
house of the base and precious metals, rich in every element of 
present prosperity and far richer in every element of future 
opulence." Its teeming millions will some day bring the center 
of population across the Mississippi, and its energy, intelligence, 
and ambition will make it a center of culture as Avell as of wealth. 
As it is to be the host of the world in the coming months, so will 
it continue to rivet the attention of the nations, when its hills 
and its valleys, its mines and its manufactures, its fields and its 
pastures, its farms and its vineyards, give forth their storehouses 
to feed and clothe and warm and vitalize a needy world. The 



92 Brief History of the Louisiana Territory. 

Anglo-Saxon race began its career of progress on the banks of 
the Thames ; it will end that progress in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi. The history of the Mississippi valley is unique; its pres- 
ent wealth and prosperity is marvelous; its hope for the future 
is lost in boundless sublimity. Truly does the Louisiana Pur- 
chase rank third in the events of importance in United States 
history. 

THE END. 



INDEX. 



Acadia, 4. Acadians arrive in Louisiana, 45. 

Adams, Henry. On Jefferson, 49, 62. On Spanish America, 54. Parallel 

between Toussaint and Napoleon, 57. 
Adams, John, 52, 54. 

Agriculture. In Upper Louisiana, 23. Lower Louisiana, 84. 
Algonquin Indians. Allies of Champlain, 5. 
Alquier, Citizen, 52. 

Arkansas. Indians, lo. Admitted to Union, 91. 
Aubrey, Spanish governor of Louisiana, 31, 33, 39, 41. 
Austria, 52, 53. 
Bale, Peace of, 50. 
Bates, Frederick, 85. 
Baton Rouge, 41, 44, 82. 
Bayou Manchac, 41. 
Bellerive, St. Ange de, 34, 36, 38. 
Berthier, General. Signs treaty of San Ildefonso, 53. 
Bienville, Explores Lower Mississippi, 17. Founds New Orleans, 20. Leaves 

Louisiana, 27. Character and work, 27, 28. Visits Choiseul, 31. 
Biloxi. Founded, i8. 

Boisbriant, Pierre. Founds Ft. Chartres, 23. 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 52, 67, 68. 
Bonaparte, Lucian, 53, 68. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 50. Plan to take Louisiana, 51, 52, 53. Breaks peace 

of Amiens, 65, 66. Decides to give up Louisiana, 66, 67. 
Bonhomme. Founded, 36. 

Bourgmont. Builds Fort Orleans, 21. Crosses Kansas, 21. 
Burr, Aaron. Conspiracy, 85, 86. 
Cabildo. Replaces Superior Council, 33. Building the scene of transfers, 

77. 78- 
Cahokia. Founded, 22, 36. Captured by George Rogers Clark, 40, 85. 
Calvo, Marquis de Caso, 76, 77. 
Canary Islands. Immigrants from, 43. 
Cape Girardeau, 84. 

Capuchins, 27. Quarrel with Jesuits, 42. 

(93) 



94 Index. 

Carmelites, 27. 

Carondelet. Founded, 36. 

Carondelet, Baron de, Governor of Louisiana, 45, 46. 

Cartier, Jacques. Explores St. Lawrence, 4. 

Charles III, King of Spain, 31. Charles IV, 53, 65. 

Chouteau, Madame, 36. Auguste Chouteau, 36. Pierre Chouteau, 36. 

Champlain, Samuel de. Founds Quebec^ 4. 

Choiseul. Spanish minister, 31. 

Claiborne, C. C, 55. Governor of Louisiana, 77-So. 

Clark, George Rogers. Captures Kaskaskia and Cahokia, 40. 

Clark, William. Expedition, 86, 87. Governor of Missouri, 90. 

Coligny. Attempt to plant a French colony in Florida, 4. 

Colorado. Admitted to Union, 91. 

Coureur-de-bois. Forerunners of progress, 37. 

Creole. Definition, 82. Life, 82-84. 

Creve-Coeur, Fort, 12. 

Crozat, Anthony. Assumes control of Louisiana, i8. Surrenders Louisi- 
ana, 19. 

Cruzat, Don Francisco. Governor of Upper Louisiana, 39, 40, 41. 

D'Abbadie, Director-general of Louisiana, 30, 35. 

Dagobert, Father, 42. 

Dakota. Territory divided and admitted to Union, 91. 

Dauphin Island. Settlement on, 18. 

De Monts. Obtains permission to plant a colony in Acadia, 4. 

De Soto. Discovers the Mississippi, 3. 

Duralde, Martin. French surveyor at St. Louis, 39. 

Du Tisne. Explores Missouri, 21. 

Federalists, 55, 72, 73, 74, jS, 88. 

Florissant. Founded, 36. 

Fontainebleau, Treaty of, 29. 

Fort Bourbon. Founded, 21. 

Fort Chartres. Founded, 23. Reached by Laclede, 35. French garrison. 
Leaves, 36. 

Fort Dauphin. Founded, 21. 

Fort Frontenac, ii. 

Fort La Reine. Founded, 21. 

Fort Pierre. Founded, 21. 

Fort St. Charles. Founded, 21. 

Foucault. Leader in Creole revolution, 32. 

Francis I. Decides to send expedition to America, 4. 

Franciscans, 5. 

French and Indian War, 28, 29. 



Index. 95 

French Revolution, 26. Excitement in New Orleans, 45. Jacobin procla- 
mation, 45. 

Frontenac. Governor of Canada, 11. 

Galvez, Don Bernardo de. Spanish governor at New Orleans, 43. Aids 
Americans in Revolution, 44. Leaves Louisiana, 45. 

Godoy, Don Manuel. Spanish minister, 46, 47, 50, 53, 54, 55, 65. 

Government. Of Canada, 6. Of Louisiana under the French, 25, 26, 27. 
Of Louisiana under the Spanish, 33, 34. Of Louisiana under the United 
States, 80, 81. Of Missouri Territory, 90. 

Green Bay. Mission Station, 6, 9, 10. 

Guillemardet, Citizen. French diplomat, 51. 

Harrison, William Henry, 85. 

Hennepin, Louis, 11. 

Howard, Benjamin, 85. 

Huguenots, 5. Petition to Louis XIV, 17. 

Iberville, Le Moyne de. Continues La Salle's plan, 16. Reaches mouth of 
Mississippi, 17. Builds Fort Biloxi, 17. Other settlements, 18. 

Indian Territory, 91. 

Iowa. Admitted to Union, 91. 

Iroquois, 4, 6. 

Jackson, Andrew. Approached by Burr, 86. At New Orleans, 89, 90. 

Jefferson, Thomas. Inaugurated, 48. Character, 48, 49. Friendship for 
France, 55. Instructions to Livingston, 61. Political manipulation, 62. 
Threats to Pichon, 63. Letter to Monroe, 64. Mr. Schouler on Jeffer- 
son's diplomacy, 65. Proposes amendment to the Constitution, 70, 71. 
Message regarding Louisiana, 75. Responsible for Louis and Clark ex- 
pedition, 86. 

Jesuits, 4, 22, 23, 27. Quarrel with Capuchins, 42. 

Joliet, Louis. Explores Mississippi, 9, 10. 

Kansas. Admitted to Union, 91. 

Kaskaskia. Founded, 22, 34, 36. Captured by George Rogers Clark, 40, 85. 

Kerleric, Governor of Louisiana, 28, 30. 

La Boulaye. Fort, 17. 

Labusciere, Joseph, 38. 

Laclede, Pierre. Lands in New Orleans, 35. Founds St. Louis, 36. Death 
40. 

La Harpe, Benard. Visits the Nassonite Indians, 20, 21. 

La Mothe Cadillac. Governor of Louisiana, 19. 

Lafreniere. Leader in Creole revolution, 32. 

La Salle. Education and arrival in Canada, 7. Exploration of the Ohio and 
the Illinois, 8, 9. Plans French Empire in Mississippi Valley, 10, 11. 
In France, 11, 13. Sets out for Mississippi, 12. Wilderness journey, 12, 



96 Index. 

13. Reaches mouth of the Mississippi, 13. In Texas, 14. Death, 14. 
Character and work, 15. 

Laussat, Pierre Clement, 76, 77, 79. Letter regarding Louisiana, 81. 

Law, John. Organized Mississippi Company, 19. 

Leclerc, General. In St. Domingo, 58. 

Lefebre, Judge, 38. 

Le Sueuer. Explores Minnesota, 20. 

Lewis, Meriwether. Governor of Missouri Territory, 85. Expedition, 
86, 87. 

Leybe, Fernando de. Governor of Upper Louisiana, 40, 41. 

Livingston, Robert R. Sent to France, 55. Negotiations, 61, 67, 68. Joy 
over treaty, 69. Fears Napoleon will change his mind, 71. 

Loftus, Major. Attacked by Indians, 34. 

Louis XIV. Becomes interested in New France, 6. Surrenders Louisiana to 
Crozat, 18. To the Miss. Co., 19. 

Louis XV. Orders Louisiana to be turned over to Spanish, 30, 36. 

Louisiana Fur Company, 35. 

Louisiana Territory. Boundaries, 74, 75. Area, 75. Jefferson's message 
concerning, 75. Transferred to France, 77. To United States, 78, 79. 
Government, 80. Life in, 82-85. Louisiana admitted to Union, 88. 

Louisiana Treaty, The, 68, 69, 72, 73. 

L'Ouverture, Toussaint, 56-59. 

Luneville, Peace of, 52. 

McMaster, John B. On the Federalists, 72, 73. On New Orleans, 82, 83. 

Madison, James. Threatens Pichon, 63. Refuses to treat with him, 64. 

Mallet Brothers. Explore Platte River and visit Santa Fe, 21. 

Marbois, Barbe, 66, 67, 68, 75. 

Marquette, Jacques. Explores Mississippi, 9, 10. 

Milhet, Jean. Sent to France, 31. 

Mines. At Galena, 23. Potosi, 23. Mine Lamotte, 23. 

Minnesota. Explored, 20. Admitted to Union, 91. 

Miro, Don Estevan, 44. Governor of Louisiana, 45. 

Mississippi Company. Organized, 19. Rule, 20, 22, 23, 26. 

Mississippi River. Discovery, 3. Indian references to, 7. Mouth reached 
by La Salle, 13. 

Missouri. First settlement, 23. Territory organized, 90. Admitted to Un- 
ion, 90. 

Monroe, James. Sent to France, 63. Conversation with Pichon, 64. Ar- 
rives in Paris, 67. Signs treaty, 68, 69. 

Montana. Admitted to Union, 91. 

Mobile Bay. Settlement on, 18. 

Montaigne. On French quarrelsomeness, 5. 



Index. 97 

Morales, Don Juan Ventura. Suspends the right of deposit at New Orleans, 
62, 63. 

Morgan, Col. George. Founds New Madrid, 44. 

Natchez. Trading station, 19, 41. Captured by Ga[vez, 44. 

Natchitoches, 21, 82. 

Nebraska. Admitted to Union, 91. 

Nemours, Dupont de, 61, 64. 

New Madrid. Founded, 44, 82, 84. 

New Orleans. Founded, 20. Arrival of immigrants, 22. Progress, 24, 
Population, 45. Scene of transfers, 33, 77, 78, 79. Description, 81-85. 

Niagara, Fort, 12. 

Nicollet, Jean. Explorations, 6, 7. 

Oklahoma Territory, 91. 

Opelausas, 82. 

O'Reilly, Alexander. Governor of Louisiana, 32, 33, 39. 

Orleans, Territory of. Organized, 80, 8i. Admitted as Louisiana, 88. 

Pakenham, Sir Edward, 89. 

Paris, Treaty of, 29. 

Parkman, Francis, 4, 25. 

Parma, Duke of, 52. 

Pichon, French charge approached by Gallatin and Madison, 63. Threat- 
ened by Monroe, 65. At Washington, 73. 

Pickering, Timothy, 74. 

Piernas, Don Pedro. Takes possession of Upper Louisiana, 39. 

Pike, Zebulon M., 87, 88. 

Point Coupe, 82. 

Port of Deposit at New Orleans, 46, 62, 63. 

Population. Louisiana in 1745, 24. Upper Louisiana in 1799, 41. Louisi- 
ana in 1803, 45. Of New Orleans, 45. Of Louisiana, 82. 

Portage des Sioux, 37. 

Purchase of Louisiana, 67-69. Importance, 92. 

Quebec. Founded, 4, 5. 

Quincy, Josiah. Threat of secession, 88, 89. 

Renault, Philip. Opens lead mines at Galena, Illinois, 23. 

Republicans, 72, 73, 74. 

Richelieu. Government of Canada, 6. 

Roberval. Attempt to plant colony in America, 4. 

Rocky Mountains. Discovery, 22. Passed by Lewis and Clark, 87. 

St. Charles, Missouri, 36. 

St. Cyr, Gouvion, 65, 71. 

Saint-Denis, Juchereau de. Establishes Natchitoches, 19. 

St. Domingo. A basis of operation against Louisiana, 51. Condition in 
7 



98 Index. 

1802, 56. Revolution, 57-60. 

St. Joseph River. Fort built at mouth in 1678, 12. 

St. Lawrence. Explored, 4. 

St. Louis, Missouri. Founded, 34, 35. Growth, 36. Government, 38. Oc- 
cupied by Spaniards, 39. Attacked by Indians, 40. Population, 41, 84. 
Taken by Stoddard, 84. Growth, 90. 

St. Louis, of the Illinois, 13. 

St. Louis, of Texas, 14. 

Ste. Genevieve. Founded, 23. Reached by Laclede, 35. 

Salcedo, Governor, 76, 77. 

Sault St. Marie. Mission point, 6. 

Schouler, James. On Jefferson's diplomacy, 65. 

Ship Island. Settled, 18. 

Slavery. Slaves brought to New Orleans, 22. Black Code enacted, 27. 
Number in Upper Louisiana, 41. 

Sterling, Captain. Takes possession of Illinois, 34. 

Stevens, Edward, 57. 

Stoddard, Amos, 84, 85. 

Superior Council, 26, 30, 31, 32, 33, 42. 

Talleyrand. French diplomat, 50. X. Y. Z. affair, 51, 52. Diplomacy, 55, 
67, 68. 

Tchoupitoulas, 82. 

Tonty, Henry de, 11, 13, 14, 16. 

Treaty of Madrid, 46, 47. 

Treaty of Morfontaine, 52. 

Treaty of Paris, 29, 41. 

Treaty of San Ildefonso, 53, 72. 

Ulloa, Antonio de. Spanish governor of Louisiana, 31, 41. Driven out, 32. 

Unzaga, Don Luis de. Governor of Louisiana, 41, 42, 43. 

Vaudreuil, Marquis de. Governor of Louisiana, 28. 

V^rendrye, Chevalier de la. Discovers upper Rocky Mountains, 21, 22. 

Verendrye, Pierre la. Explores the Northwest, 21. 

Vergennes, Count de, 50. 

Verrazano. Explores east coast of United States, 4. 

Victor, General. Prepares army to take possession of Louisiana, 76. 

Vincennes, 85. 

Washington, George, 24, 25. 

Wealth of Mississippi Valley, 91, 92. 

Whitworth, Lord, 65, 66. 

Wilkinson, General James. Commissioner to receive Louisiana, 77, 78, 80, 
Governor of District of Louisiana, 85. Engaged in Burr conspiracy, 86. 

Willing, Captain. Obtains aid from New Orleans during revolution, 44. 

Wyoming. Admitted to Union, 91. 

Yrujo. Spanish minister, 63, 71. 



LofC. 



DEC 10 1904 



